The content industry is now in an IP (intellectual property) war. The future of a business depends on whether it has IP. IP goes beyond simple intellectual property rights. Think of Harry Potter, Pokémon, BTS, Tom Cruise, Baby Shark, and Cookie Run. IP branches out as a genre with an original universe, varying its stories.
Chanel and Apple are the most successful mega brands in human history, but they cannot become IP. The relationship between IP and fandom goes beyond the density of the relationship between brands and consumers who buy and sell image and lifestyle. Fandom puts one's own life on the story world that IP unfolds. That is why citizens who enter the IP universe transcend generations and gender to unite and resonate in the IP universe, creating moving scenes.
At the forefront of that IP industry is gaming. Along with Squid Game and K-pop Demon Hunters, Cookie Run is a representative game IP that made the 2025 YouTube Global Culture & Report Trend Topics Top 10. What brought Cookie Run's story squarely into view were two exhibitions in the spring.
The special commemorative exhibition for National Heritage Day, "Cookie Run; in search of the lost national heritage," held at Dondeokjeon in Deoksugung, and "Legacy of the great kingdom," a collaboration between traditional craft masters and Cookie Run: Kingdom. Deoksugung, where the exhibition was held, and the Ara Art Center in Insadong bustled with diverse audiences across age and gender.
It was not just a quaint, childlike world of little cookies. Game characters embodied with traditional materials moved through a weighty game universe—destruction and nihilism, ambition and abundance, sloth and passion—stirring a literary sense of the sublime. There was a dream map where the courage and traces of ancestors were delicately restored, spanning from the Korean Empire and Hanseong, to Gyeongseong, to modern Seoul.
I was deeply impressed by the cookies' "kkil-kki-ppa-ppa" that embraces both real history and the history of hope, and by the completeness of the forms that restored the lost national heritage.
How is a global IP born? How are a universal universe that moves East and West across time, original characters, and devilish detail created?
A flagship Korean global IP with a fandom of 300 million that exceeds the estimated 250 million Hallyu fans. I met Devsisters Cookie Run's chief IP officer, Lee Eun-ji (Devsisters CIPO), to hear that unique "growth saga."
Lee Eun-ji joined Devsisters at 21 as a part-time concept artist, then helped bring Cookie Run to life and shared its ups and downs for 17 years. Lee said there was not a single dull moment as the brave cookies ran, stumbled, and finally built a great kingdom.
-How is it still new for 17 years straight?
"(Eyes shining) When you shine light on a raw gem, you keep finding different colors and layers, right? That is what Cookie Run's cookies are to me. Growing IP is like raising a child. They get into trouble, go through twists and turns, get hurt, and sometimes come home after a beating. They grew up so well that they are loved by 300 million."
-Bottom line, what created a 300 million fandom?
"(Smiling) Story! It was all the power of story. It is a truth that humans get immersed in a good story. That has not changed then or now."
For Lee Eun-ji, who experienced diverse subcultures in the internet's golden age, "content was like a beautiful survival letter every human sends out into the world." Lee said they survived as a story addict, thanks to countless sparkling stories that said, "the world is worth living," whenever Lee stumbled.
"When someone asked, 'Who are you?' I answered in a breath. 'I am someone who believes in the power of story.' For the MZ generation, self-exploration and the content of work are threaded together. What story can I put into my life and career? That determined the quality of the work."
All survivors, Lee said, are indebted to stories.
-What story is contained in your life and career?
"When I joined the company in 2009, it was a fledgling startup of 15 people. The iPhone came out in 2007 and was causing a stir across the ocean with a mobile revolution that changed human life, but oddly Korea was quiet.
Less than two years into being a small game company, we made a tremendous declaration. 'The place where the largest audience will meet in the future is the mobile platform. Devsisters will build a game world that people around the world play on mobile…' I thought we could rise as high as our dreams were big."
In the days when the concept of a smartphone was faint, the iPhone 4 landed, and mobile instantly connected people around the world. Mobile games were real-time and interactive. Unlike Nintendo and PlayStation, mobile had to keep throwing new stories to users every two weeks to a month.
-Like Scheherazade?
"Like Scheherazade! If you do not give a thousand stories every night, you are fated to lose your neck. The sense that we would die without giving entertaining stories was in my cells."
-How did Cookie Run survive with its story?
"The essence is 'the story of cookies who escaped the oven on their own so they would not be eaten.' A survival tale, pure and simple."
-What does it mean to become a flagship Korean IP?
"Cookie Run started by becoming the No. 1 global free game in 2009, and more than 70% of our users are global. Beyond games, we are loved worldwide as diverse cultural products. The steady-seller Cookie Run Adventure, city travel, Chinese character exploration series, merchandise, and card games… In last year's YouTube Trend Report, we made the U.S. Top 10 alongside KDH and Roblox.
At New York Comic Con's offline event, 20,000 people flocked to us, forming a powerful fandom culture. With that strength, we held a collaborative exhibition at Dondeokjeon in Deoksugung to find the lost cultural heritage of the Korean Empire, and we also made serious collaboration products with craft masters. Together with the Korea Heritage Service, we are in the final stage of compiling world cultural heritage in Korea."
-How far has the universe advanced?
"The core universe is beings who run to choose their own lives. That point evokes empathy across borders, gender, and generations."
-"Sparkling and shining," "light and many"… that is the image that comes to mind.
"(Delighted) Exactly. Light and many, sparkling and shining… All 7 billion humans are models for cookies. This log line determined Cookie Run's future and lifespan. I still write important sentences and stories myself. While organizing the five-year grand saga of Cookie Run: Kingdom recently, this sentence came to mind.
"We are finite beings, but we sense the world all at once like the stars in the night sky. As stars shining in different spaces and times embroider the night sky, may this world we share be filled with sparkles."
-It began with the Gingerbread Man, right?
"Right! I was 21, making the key visual. Our goal was a game played by people around the world, so we had to make something everyone knew. Something that felt good just to think of, familiar and soft… that was cookies. To have vitality, it had to be simple. That was the Gingerbread Man.
Back when mobile games had a lifespan of three months, people were curious about the next new title. But I thought differently. "A new title? I am going to see this through to the end." Then I kept shining light on this tiny cookie. The wilds are vast—like the witch's kitchen and the hedgehog forest—so why is the cookie so small and fragile… At some point I came to and realized I was drawing the cookie's back. My body had gone into the cookie!
Then the questions burst out. What is the essence of the Gingerbread Man? Why make a human-shaped cookie? The moment you draw eyes, nose, and mouth on any inanimate thing, emotion is inscribed. Humans are creatures who live by projecting themselves.
The Gingerbread Man we give and receive at Christmas—if you add life dust to this cookie, it becomes a metaphor for a creature. This must be an homage to humans. If we build IP on this as the content base, it can last 100 years. My heart raced at that thought. Previously the audience were users of a running game with cute cookies, but the moment this becomes your story and mine…"
-Users become fans?
"Yes. All humanity identifies with cookies as survivors. We were all suddenly thrown onto Earth, and when we were born, the world was too vast, cruel, and indifferent. We are weak, fragile, finite beings, but we do not want to be consumed by meaninglessness.
We cannot just be devoured by the limits called fate… And then a cookie that bursts out of the oven—there is life in that. You discover yourself in the cookie's saga. Fandom that begins that way has strong cohesion."
-Once universality sets in, the momentum becomes unstoppable.
"Right. As it becomes humanity's story, it transcends men and women, borders, generations, and gender. By positioning itself as a kind of fable, it becomes everyone's story. That is why 70% of fans are global, and the North American fandom is the largest."
-Is it bigger than BTS?
"Ha ha. Probably not. But for a Korea-made IP, this level of phenomenon in North America is rare. There is Pororo, Baby Shark, and Teenieping, but content for young children has a limited audience. Even so, when I hear Pororo's song "Playing is the best," I feel it has tremendous philosophical depth. Cookie started from a cute character, but when we set it as human, the universe widened dramatically."
-Like a child actor going through a coming-of-age… a rite of passage must have been needed.
"(Eyes shining) There is a process of turning dark. By setting cookies as human and the witch on the oven as a god, Cookie Run moved into a story about gods and humans. Like the gods in Greek and Roman mythology, the witch is violent and imperfect. And one day, a cookie that was running begins to question its birth.
'Why are our bodies sweet? Why are they weak and fragile?'
Carrying the taboo question, it peeks at the witch's banquet, the tea party. The creators—the witches—eating cookies… 'Ah! I was a being to be eaten!' In that moment, awakening begins. I have a self and I dream. I will become a being stronger than the witch."
-So the birth of a villain. A dark hero of sorts…
"Yes. To create the 'ultimate cookie' that shatters the concept of being eaten, a dark hero is born who ultimately sacrifices many cookies."
-Marvel, which created countless dark heroes, pushed into the Metaverse, but now feels scattered and old, stuck in place.
"IPs with massive universes find it hard to stay fresh. What matters is not how much you expand that world. It is how detailed you make it. Even if the universe looks clichéd, if the emotions and meanings are fine-grained and dense, people around the world relate. KDH proved that. Maybe Korean storytellers are all like Scheherazade. They are wired with a survival sense that if it is not fun, you die (laughs). They twist it a little each time to create something new. Fitting exactly to various platforms."
-The core of global IP is bright, hopeful storytelling. BTS also succeeded by unfolding a growth saga brightly and sincerely. How does Cookie Run balance darkness and light, good and evil?
"BTS, unlike traditional pop stars, has no sexualized or decadent image. They stylishly speak to humanity's universal hopes and won love and trust. They reveal themselves without filters and share even their mistakes live; the public loved such sincere communication.
"Love Yourself" encapsulates everything. Many models like this have come after BTS.
I say the overarching theme of the Cookie Run saga (a unit of grand narrative) is the story of life and living. Sweet cookies that had hardened come alive as life dust is sprinkled on them. And the Cookie Run villain questions their life. "Why was I born in this body?" "What do I live for?" While asking fundamental questions, they become tainted by evil, but there is no right answer.
Because we were not born to find an answer. We were not born to achieve something. We were born to hold the hand of the person next to us. In a dark and cruel world, we were born to say to the person beside us, "Thank you for holding my hand and running with me."
-"We were born to say to the person next to us, 'Thank you for holding my hand and running with me.'"
"Yes. To implement that message in the game, we give story each time you defeat an enemy and clear a stage. In the end, Cookie Run is an adventure story of a brave cookie who meets extraordinary friends and sets off."
-Why does Galaxy Express 999 suddenly come to mind?
"(Clapping) Oh! I really love Miyazawa Kenji's Night on the Galactic Railroad, the prototypical novel of Galaxy Express 999. In the animation, Cheol boards the train with only the clothes on his back and wanders the universe with only the hope of meeting his mother. He may or may not meet her, but he travels the universe holding onto hope. I thought it was like Waiting for Godot."
Lee said they want to deliver stories that contain hope, even if the future is uncertain, by changing forms across various platforms—Comic Con, video, and writing.
-Beyond games…?
"Yes. Beyond games. Our essence is story. Through story, we want to connect as much as possible to corners of the world—even remote parts of Africa. In the AI era, battles over technology or formats do not last long. Only how original you are, and how inclusive you are, matters."
-The world is now in a full-blown war to carve up the time pie. Who are your competitors?
"The fiercest competitor is short-form. Games are an act of playing and meeting stories, so they are close to long-form. We are grappling with how to win time from short-form, which steals attention with short, strong dopamine. Short-form is seriously addictive. For our part, we are designing not as a one-way street but in a way that helps cognition—into a philosophical platform that broadly requires spatial perception, judgment, and more.
You might call it a long-form that gives fun like short-form. In fact, ambiguous content in the middle section struggles to survive. Either easy content that delivers dopamine quickly, or truly epic experiences that take you to another world with a great story… Those are the unique and grand experiences people want to leave online to find in the outside world."
-I heard that when you developed Cookie Run: Kingdom, you rolled out an enormous sheet of paper on the floor and began by drawing the continents. How do you create a unique and grand experiential world?
"It began with a request to 'draw a pretty cookie castle.' But the designer refused. 'I cannot just draw a pretty cookie castle.' Why? A castle is the flower of human civilization, so you cannot draw a single flag, brick, or emblem carelessly. A family's emblem is also layered with history and context, so mere prettiness was meaningless. We needed a story about who owns this castle, what residents live there, what has happened up to now.
So we went to Office Depot, bought poster paper and colored pencils, and booked a conference room for a month. Artists and story writers put our heads together and declared, "We are the Luo Guanzhong (author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms) of the cookie world, the Herodotus (Greek historian), the Kim Jeong-ho (Joseon-era cartographer). From now on, let's create a single world!" It was the so-called universe bible project.
-How did the declaration of the creator begin?
"Ha ha. Someone drew a red line across the poster paper. "Let's call this the equator!" "Above is the Northern Hemisphere, below is the Southern Hemisphere!" That became light. Based on the equator, we divided climate, culture, and vegetation like Earth and began drawing a virtual world. Subtropics, desert climate, temperate, tundra, glacial zones… If you slice a rising mountain with a bread knife, you see the layers of the continent. Chocolate sheet layer, whipped cream layer, syrup layer.
The roof of the world, the Himalayas, became the Giant Icing Range; the Amazon at the equator became the Green Salad Forest; rivers became dressing rivers; and we filled the dessert vegetation with jelly flowers and candy trees. We would sleep in the corner of the conference room, wake up, and, without even wiping the sleep from our eyes, gather around to draw the map. We worked like crazy, exhilarated. It really felt like becoming creators… The creative heat and uplift were tremendous."
-I felt that the know-how from creating the virtual world of Cookie Run: Kingdom carried over into the Deoksugung project. At the Deoksugung exhibition, I was moved by the imagined map where Hanseong, Gyeongseong, and Seoul coexisted. It was a highly realistic, optimistic fantasy painting where today's dream led to tomorrow's dream.
"We even restored the demolished Donuimun and brought back all the Four Great Gates and the four small gates. Gojong's first theater, Hyeopyulsa, and the Gongyeop Jeonseupso (now Korea National Open University), which trained industrial workers to strengthen the nation, are all on the map.
We decorated Gwanghwamun as Yukjo Street to bring back old Hanseong inside the city walls, while Gangnam and Mapo recreated modern Seoul. We drew in every little thing—the Lotte World Tower, Han River cruise ships, even Han River instant noodles (laughs)."
When the Korea Heritage Service suggested doing a meaningful exhibition at Dondeokjeon in Deoksugung, Lee said they wandered the palace courtyard for three hours, conjuring its mood and imagery.
-While Cookie Run artists completed the imagined map of Seoul, the craft masters reinterpreted Cookie Run characters. It was a different experience where hybrid and roots crossed.
"We worked with 10 traditional craft masters—najeon chilgi (mother-of-pearl lacquerware), embroidery, and hwagak (ox horn inlay), among others. Each master spent a year reinterpreting one character through traditional craft and linked it to media art. Everyone loved it. I believe traditional culture itself is a super IP. It is not just something old that is disappearing. They are refined from the hottest content of the time.
If traditional culture is content that has survived 100 years, then it could be a timeless story on the same line as Cookie Run… In that way, Cookie Run borrows the heritage of the past, and traditional culture borrows Cookie Run's audience—a beautiful exchange, a beautiful story… This is our life…"
-Stack up enough of those scenes and the class changes.
"(Smiling) That is what we hoped. Hallyu is truly mainstream now. Dramas, films, and music are loved and followed worldwide, but there is no character IP that spans borders, generations, and gender. But if you have characters like Mickey Mouse, you can link diverse industries and cultures. Characters play the role of cultural ambassadors.
So I dreamed this: if Cookie Run lasts 100 years, Korea will become a country that possesses IP heritage."
Lee said collaborations with the Korea Heritage Service and the masters are the start.
-Do you study separately to craft philosophy and message?
"When I seek answers on the path of story, I delve into subculture, media pop, and the classics."
-The classics?
"Yes. Kafka's novels, Virginia Woolf's novels, Huckleberry Finn, Macbeth, Hamlet, Snow Country, Rashomon… When you read literature, you come to know. Humans are all the same! Even in different environments and ideologies, human desire and hope are the same across generations. There is a joy in discovering that.
I liked the thrill of being connected across time at once to people of the past, like how I see starlight from millions of years away now. I especially love Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot."
-Waiting for Godot, in fact, ends with nothing happening, just waiting. It is an absurdist play rather than a tightly woven story.
"That is what I liked. I saw hope that we can live even without answers. There is no salvation, no assignment of meaning, and we can live without knowing why… That ending, not a beautifully concluded one, paradoxically felt like a beautiful story to me. It is okay even without a neat beginning-middle-end-conclusion; the "ongoing" itself, that dryness, the story that it is okay to have no story—that gave me great comfort."
-Is the size of inclusivity an advantage as a game story?
"I think the numbers prove it. Cumulative users: 300 million. Cumulative revenue: $1 billion. A mega-hit, large franchise. At the very top is Battlegrounds, and in the domestic market there is MapleStory, but as a game-born IP, Cookie Run is rare in spanning from infants and toddlers to teens and even people in their 50s. Moms, dads, babies, teens, and college students all love it.
We could have a hot fandom culture because the story's inclusivity is large. The male-female ratio is 50-50, a miraculous split."
-What about Pokémon?
"Pokémon also has a structure that can expand infinitely. It turns 30 this year and has 1,200 characters. Cookie Run has 500 at its 17th anniversary, so Pokémon is Cookie Run's big brother. Pokémon is also based on animals, making it a biologically sustainable IP."
-Is there a character you feel especially attached to?
"First, Brave Cookie. It is a character that projects me. A persona that contains our story, based on courage. Second, Saint Lily Cookie. This one is the villain. At the witches' tea party, this character turns dark, saying, 'I will not be eaten like this.'
Third is Sea Fairy, fourth is Wind Archer. I drew both during my concept artist days, so I have unusual affection for them. Wind Archer is a spirit who controls the wind. In the Deoksugung project, when a great fire burned Deoksugung to the ground, this character became the protagonist of an "alternate history," extinguishing the flames with the power of a wind fan. We also collaborated with a master fan-maker. Fifth is Zombie Cookie. It carries one of Cookie Run's souls. Bones stick out, and brain matter spills out."
-Shall we talk now about leaders, corporate culture, and colleagues? How is a leader in the world of story different from a traditional leader?
"The leader I imagine is someone who finds a beautiful sentence that others can immerse in and persuades the team. I was 24, working on Cookie Run for Kakao. We were a small team of about 10, and the odds of failure were higher, so pay and benefits were poor. What was in the heads of the young people who pitched a tent on a container rooftop and cooked rice in an electric cooker?
The thought that 'we are making something truly special,' the sense that we were writing our own life stories. Stories create immersion, and when you are immersed, scenes you want to see come to mind. Back then it was 10 of us, but now about 800 people imagine those scenes.
In my 20s, I learned that the size of the sentence and the dream matters. In 2009, during Cookie Run for Kakao, the grandiose sentence—'Let's make a mobile game people around the world play'—bound us as one. Now it is, 'Let's create an IP heritage that lasts 100 years.' If you can compellingly craft a sentence that seems impossible but is cool, everyone can move together with it. A strong story builds organizational strength."
-How do you gather capable colleagues?
"In interviews, I ask: Is there a story that changed your life? Tell me about the content—game, animation, comic, novel, anything—that changed your life. Some answer right away; others are taken aback. The faces of people who expound on the story that saved them are beautiful. I keep asking: And then? And then? The genres differ, but generally they are hopeful stories that make the world a better place."
-What kind of company is Devsisters?
"A company where people who keep talking, to the point of sounding old-fashioned, about how life is beautiful, gather to create collectively. A company where each person becomes a Scheherazade telling a thousand stories."
-On behalf of 7 billion people…
"Yes. The game platform is structurally bound to be democratic. If one person drags it for 17 years, it becomes self-derivative, but if we all make it together, there is hope. Developers, PMs, story, sound, writers—the experiences, lives, and salvation sagas of each member all melt into it. To make that happen, a culture that encourages people to tell stories is important.
For example, an event called Cookie-thon gathers 70 artists, pauses work for about five days, and holds a marathon of cookie creation. About 200 characters usually come out of it. Participants present what kind of friend it is, the background, wishes, deficiencies, and non-negotiables, and, as if on Produce 101, about 10% are chosen through auditions. Friends with compelling stories and emotions survive."
-When you faced a major crisis, how did you break through the limits?
"In 2020, after Cookie Run had become a national running game, we were at a point where we had not found a new path. Headcount had grown, but potential had dropped. Is this the end? Is this the lifespan? Could we build the basic stamina to go 30 more years? We gathered with a resolve to go 'back to the core' with the members. The question we asked then was, "What scene do you want to see?"
Someone answered, "I want to see cookies all come together to farm, build, and live alongside each other." Not a one-way running game where each fights alone… but cookies who live together, then leave their home, meet various enemies, have new adventures, and return.
By genre, it is a mix of "town-building" and "combat," with decorating favored by women and combat by men. Games require so much capital and time that if your target is not clear, you can lose everything. Naturally, many opposed it. We poured five years of our youth into the design, so of course I was anxious, too."
-How did you manage the anxiety?
"We looked at the essence. 'Regardless of gender or age, creating a nest, mining resources, going out to conquer and adventure, and returning is a universal human instinct'… We persuaded the team that way and launched Cookie Run: Kingdom in Jan. 2021."
The result was a huge success. So many people rushed in at once that servers went down. It was during COVID, and people, isolated at home, wanted to connect through games. Animal Crossing, a similar genre by Nintendo, also became a smash hit.
"People wanted to cultivate their towns and peek into the towns their friends built. When the servers were unstable and they could not log in, many knocked on the door saying, 'Open up. My cookies—my life—are in there.'"
-Going forward, is a feature film possible, like K-pop Demon Hunters?
"Of course! We are setting the "Dark Cacao Kingdom" as Joseon and designing it as a land of lonely warriors. Fans are eagerly waiting for a feature animation right now. For now, we are keeping in the trend scene by collaborating with other character IPs. KDH characters, Wicked, The Wizard of Oz, the entire Disney IP, and BTS's RM Cookie and Jin Cookie have all appeared."
-Endless branching, then!
"Users of new media have no interest in stagnant stories. They keep following the journey to the next story and the one after that. Just as you watch Black-and-White Chef and move on to An Sung-jae TV, stories are not isolated. They must expand as unfinished, still-living narratives. Fortunately, the Cookie Run IP has soft, cute bodies, so it is easy to vary into other characters. Everyone is receptive, so we are seeping into many worlds of story."
-What scene do you ultimately want to see?
"Our catchphrase is 'Make the world joyful, in wider places, to more people, for a long time.' Even in the same world, I want to see a world where, by hearing stories, people feel it is more worth living."
-Lastly, please offer advice to Korean players who are struggling on the front lines to create Hallyu content.
"Korean creators are truly special. The pure desire to say, 'I want to convey the beauty I felt to you,' is world-top. That is why the strength of Hallyu content is the K spirit itself. Koreans are genuinely interested in others' lives. The interference, involvement, empathy, and immersion in family and community are immense, producing many scenes that astonish people around the world—from plaza culture to the unique "nunchi" culture. What surprises the world is that 'emotional density.'
There is such rich soil beneath K content. So you can trust that the story you want to tell will resonate across borders. Ideas or technology alone are not enough. 'Why do I have to tell this story in today's world?' Find the reason first. Look into yourself with a unique perspective, and push forward with a story rooted in your formation of self. We will be waiting for your excellent content and IP. Let's meet in the future with stories that save each other."