"I made a reservation in advance to do an 'open run' on the first morning. I'm satisfied because there's nothing overlapping with the goods that came out before."
At 11 a.m. on the 16th at the Naver Webtoon "Maru Is a Puppy" popup store inside Lotte World Mall in Jamsil, Songpa-gu, Seoul, a 20-something office worker said this. Introducing themself as a "webtoon geek," the person said they came from Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, to buy webtoon merchandise that day.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) are holding the "2025 World Webtoon Festival" in cooperation with Lotte Department Store. The World Webtoon Festival is an event where people can meet Korean webtoons offline, and it launched its first edition in Seongsu last year. This year, more than 200 webtoon intellectual properties (IP) are participating, and various events are planned around the Lotte Town area in Jamsil, Seoul. Starting on the 19th, a comics and webtoon planning exhibition will be held at the Lotte World ice rink, and the awards ceremony for the "2nd World Webtoon Awards," which recognizes outstanding webtoons at home and abroad, will also take place.
At this year's webtoon festival, various webtoon production companies are operating popup stores inside Lotte World Mall, where visitors can find merchandise from 35 hit webtoons. From today through the 26th, 11 distinctive popup spaces will be set up from the basement first floor to the fourth floor of Lotte World Mall, showcasing more than 1,200 types of IP-themed goods. Unlike last year's exhibition-focused webtoon festival, this one is centered on differentiated IP merchandise planning.
The Naver Webtoon popup store visited that day was selling around 100 types of goods using the popular IP character "Maru Is a Puppy" with a bakery-cafe concept. Even though it was a weekday morning, the roughly 30-pyeong popup store was packed with webtoon fans with no room to move. They carried shopping baskets and filled them with items such as pouches, patches, slippers, dolls, and notebooks featuring webtoon characters. They also kept taking photos in front of large panels with the characters and spaces designed with a bakery concept.
Maru Is a Puppy began serialization on Naver Webtoon in Jun. 2022 and concluded in Nov. last year. It warmly and cheerfully depicts the daily life that unfolds when a dog raised by an ordinary freelancer suddenly turns into a 5-year-old child one day. Thanks to its cute and distinctive characters, it has a fandom that spans all age groups.
Naver Webtoon said it is managing entry to the popup store by advance reservation to prevent crowds of fans, and will operate on-site entry flexibly depending on the situation. Currently, nearly 100 people are applying for each time slot's advance reservations at the Naver Webtoon popup store.
Beyond Naver Webtoon, the popup stores of webtoon production companies visited that day were also crowded with many webtoon fans. The popup store for the hit webtoon "Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint" applied an F&B concept for the first time, showcasing specially planned pastries, drinks, and tumblers. At the popup for "How to Hide the Emperor's Child," they unveiled a total of about 30 types of goods, including an exclusive package featuring posters, talismans, and memo pads produced using the IP of Lotte Tower. In addition, titles such as "The Remarried Empress," "Solo Leveling," and "Tomb Raider King" offered special goods making their first or limited release at this popup, including first-edition print volumes and a Chifle collaboration project.
The webtoon industry is expanding its IP business centered on merchandise based on strong fandoms. It is creating new revenue streams based on IP beyond the revenue from existing webtoon content and advertising revenue. This is similar to how the entertainment industry expanded from idol album sales to various games, webtoons, and merchandise using idol characters.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, which is hosting the World Webtoon Festival, also expects webtoons to become the next-generation leader of K-content. Accordingly, it plans to continue devoting effort to fostering the webtoon industry and increasing IP value. In fact, this year's government budget for comics and webtoons is 29.5 billion won, up by about 4.6 billion won (18%) from the previous year.
Chae Hwi-young, Minister of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, met with webtoon industry officials 4th and said, "Webtoons are the source of IP that drives the global spread of 'K-content' by expanding into various fields such as film, drama, and games," adding, "We will spare no support to establish a status befitting the birthplace of webtoons."