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.
Genre: fantasy, action, adventure, comedy, martial arts
Synopsis: The main character is from a very poor family. In order to earn some money, he decides to play a virtual reality game, Royal Road. We follow along his unlikely path to greatness.
Review: A really great webtoon. I’ve already read both the lightnovel and webtoon in English as well, but this is definitely one of my top favorites. What’s nice is that the MC is also new to this virtual reality game, so a lot of game specific vocab is slowly introduced and explained, and it’s used repeatedly so you’re bound to learn it at some point. This was kinda hard for me to grade though because like I said, I read the English version beforehand so I was able to get a lot more from context.
If you want to read the webtoons and want a little enjoyment two platforms will provide you enjoyment where you can enjoy your webtoons they are the best and I like them very much.
If you want to read webtoon then i just found the toonkor link 2024 website which is one of the best platform for the webtoon and it definitely will provide you a lot of benefit as well like for me.
Are webtoons crosslisted on multiple sites? Or are all webtoons on something like Naver Naver-only webtoons?
For Navar Series, it seems to list 권 rather than 화. Do 권 have chapters inside of them? Should each 권 be a separate book on Natively? Or should a Navar series just be one web novel entry? I’m guessing it’s the latter but not sure
It seems like there are a lot of 19+ content for webtoon & webnovel, which is an issue as then I can’t auto parse the data. I also still don’t have good adult content handling even if I was able to figure it out. Is this a significant enough part of Webtoons & webnovels that I need to figure out?
I think most webtoons appear on two or more sites, so there’s a lot of overlap, but even Naver won’t have most of them. Unlike books, I think it’s necessary to have multiple sources to pull webcomics from (not sure about webnovels, though).
I’ve noticed they often (usually?) offer both - I assume the chaptered version would be available first (at least for currently releasing titles), so it probably makes sense to prioritise that.
Unfortunately, I think it is. There’s quite a few books (web origin and otherwise) that I own in both Japanese and Korean, and while there’s no problem adding the Japanese version from Amazon, the Korean versions are all age-restricted…
I get the feeling that unlike in Japan, in Korea 만화 was mostly aimed at children/teens, but since webcomics/novels exploded, most of the content is aimed at adults, and naturally a lot of that is age-restricted. I could be wrong, though.
Synopsis: the webtoon tells the story of an ordinary office worker from the perspective of the brain cells in her head that control her every thought, feeling and action.
Review: this webtoon is a very enjoyable read, it is funny and captivating. The story is unique and the cartoon style is pretty. I believe they turned the webtoon into a tv show and a movie, but i havent watched those.
popular
all webtoons can be read for free
There’s quite a few books (web origin and otherwise) that I own in both Japanese and Korean, and while there’s no problem adding the Japanese version from Amazon, the Korean versions are all age-restricted…
