While some webtoons are completely free, most offer only the first few chapters for free, and you must pay to access the remaining chapters
Some webtoons are licenced on multiple platforms, others can only be read on one
Popular webtoons are often published as ebooks and physical copies
Some websites price chapters using coins or tokens, which can be purchased directly, won during events, or earned through certain activities (depending on the site)
Recommendations
Since most webtoons aren’t currently eligible for Natively, it would be useful if we could gather some recommendations for Korean language learners ordered by difficulty.
Synopsis: Cute animals going about their daily lives
Review: This is the easiest webtoon I’ve come across (and it’s free!) so I think it would be great for beginners. The sentences are short, the vocabulary is simple, and most of the story is told through images. Each chapter consists of only 4 or 5 panels, so it doesn’t take long to read them. Some words are changed to be more cute (for example, 싫어 changed to 시러), and the second season is a step up in difficulty, but overall, I think it would be great practice for those just starting to learn Korean. I can’t say the entertainment value was all that high, but it certainly wasn’t bad.
Synopsis: A young couple in ancient Korea long to have children, but haven’t been able to get pregnant. When they come across two young girls in the forest (who happen to have tiger ears and tails), they believe the mountain god has answered their prayers, and adopt them as their own. The daily adventures of this family and their friends.
Review: I found this an incredibly cute and entertaining webtoon - once I started reading, I couldn’t stop! (I’ve gone into more detail in my review.) Due to its popularity, the series has been printed physically (and is already in the Natively database), but it’s also available to read for free on Naver.
I just started 호랑이 들어와요. It’s cute! Not a bad match for my level either. Sometimes I don’t follow the exact meaning of a sentence but the overall plot is pretty simple, at least so far.
For the record, if some grading is really out of whack, it’s ok to ask me to change it, like here. We’re still in beta and it actually helps the grading system.
Just opened my 만화경 app and got a notification that they’ll be shutting down at the end of May 2024 - they’ve already removed the ability to read webtoons on the website, so they can only be accessed on the app.
The vast majority of the titles aren’t available elsewhere (atm, hopefully some will be rescued), so I guess I have no choice but to make a new goal of reading all the webtoons on the app before they’re gone.
popular
all webtoons can be read for free
