Kakao launches Tapas Entertainment to boost US market expansion

Kakao Entertainment -- a content subsidiary of South Korean IT giant Kakao -- has launched Tapas Entertainment to accelerate the expansion of its content businesses in North America, the company said on September 5.

Tapas Entertainment was established after a merger between Tapas Media, the first webtoon platform in North America, and Radish Media, a leading US web novel company, was completed on Aug. 5, The Korea Herald reports.

Kakao Entertainment acquired the two companies in May last year to target English-speaking regions with its content businesses.

With the launch of Tapas Entertainment, Kakao Entertainment said the goal is to ignite the growth of Korean webtoon’s global popularity by providing more synergy for local webtoon and web-based novel markets.

Kakao Entertainment will look to discover globally powerful intellectual property through the business model of novel-based comics -- a web content strategy pioneered by Kakao Entertainment as the company created a webtoon based on a popular web-based novel and saw success in the market.

The company said it has already begun working with some of the over 100,000 North American creators who had been working with Tapas Media and Radish Media before the merger.