Korean Fantasy/Romance Novels - Why don’t they ever get licensed?
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@Claire-Lilly I could see MDZS / The Untamed getting licensed by a big publisher (it's available on WebNovels iirc but not 100% quality) - it has the big brand awareness, manhua, anime, live action drama, audio drama, etc that comes with it. I'm assuming they're waiting on someone to pay the huge licensing fee that they're probably having for it.
Of course, this is a Chinese webnovel which has a different sphere & fandom.
For Korean stuff, they barely even have stuff transitioned from webtoon to print. The only one that I can think of is Tappytoon's kickstarters for a webtoon with a creator who has work published in English previously. Yen Press & Netcomics also has manhwa, but I'm not sure if they have a huge following, which affects the possibility of novels getting brought over. There isn't a push for Korean stuff, because everyone interested in that type of media from them is into kpop, kdrama, etc which makes more money and less translation overall if you think about it (subs are super low paid or unpaid in some cases like with Viki).
I'm sure there's an audience, but would it be a big enough paying audience to make it worth it like Japanese LNs?
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There is also the fact that there are no publishers in S Korea picking up these WN's and putting them to paper. There aren't a lot of people who are willing to put the businesses they own/run at risk by opening up a whole new market with NO proven viability anywhere else.
Even JP light novels were mostly ignored in the EN sphere, with a few exeptions, until recently.If you want them that much talk with the FT who is doing it and see if you can get a company started with them.
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Update 30.12.21 on the status of the availability of official Manhwa, Webtoon and Korean Novels
The major US publisher Yen Press has announced a few months ago multiple big Manhwa licenses. Currently is Solo Leveling their first Korean novel license. There will be definitely more in the near future.
Seven Seas always do their monthly surveys in which you can suggest licenses. Due to demand they even made a sublabel for chinese danmei novels starting with three MXTX works. Manhwa and Korean novel are definitely possible.
Tappytoon, a hugely popular platform for Korean Webtoons platform, recently started to translate Korean webnovels and can be read only in the App for now.
Tapas is releasing even more Korean Webtoons since the start of their partnership with Kakaopage.
Manta is a newer Webtoon platform run by Ridibooks. They offer a monthly subscription service and some of the Webtoons are also free to read.
Line Webtoon platform does Korean Webtoons for free to read and pay-per-chapter. Wattpad WEBTOON Studios recently announced WEBTOON Unscrolled, a new Graphic Novel Imprint for Original and Korean IPs.
Wordexcerpt started their own webnovel platform and are already releasing their works as ebook, audiobook and printed books (paperback and hardcover).
Wuxiaworld has been releasing some of their from chinese ans korean translated works as ebooks. By December 2021 Wuxiaworld was acquired by KakaoEntertainment which means more Korean webnovels. Also they look into licensing Japanese light novels and webnovels.
KakaoEntertainment had aquired the serial-fiction platform Radish this year as well. Their first title is What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?
Meteor Strike Media released one Korean novel in digital and print format after reaching the Kickstarter goal and announced some new licenses this year but there hasn't been news yet.
There is the Webnovel App but the quality of the translations and editing varies widely.
Some of the above mentioned publishers have their made their webnovel translations available on Tapas and Tappytoon.
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@lotteliese Hey that's really encouraging, especially if Japanese publishing subsidiaries (Yen Press) are willing to license works. And thanks for the roundup on the current state of Korean-English licenses, it's helpful.
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Wattpad WEBTOON Studios Announces WEBTOON Unscrolled, a new Graphic Novel Imprint for Leading Digital Comics from WEBTOON
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211118005543/en/
Among the announcement are Korean and Original IPs are Tower of God and True Beauty.
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https://www.wuxiaworld.com/announcement/read-wuxiaworld-merger-acquisiti
Wuxiaworld was acquired by Kakaoentertainment , which there will expand their scope of Korean webnovels and they have plans for Q3 2022 to look into licensing Japanese webnovels and Light Novels.https://radishfiction.com/stories/12219
KakaoEntertainment did acquire the serial-fiction platform Radish and of the first Korean romance webnovel is What's Wrong with Secretary Kim -
I'm kinda surprised no one has mentioned Solo Leveling, published under the Yen On imprint by Yen Press; it's a Korean work, after all.
Volume 1 eBook released on February 16, 2021, per Rakuten Kobo.
First three volumes already released, volume 4 available for pre-order.I'd call that "licensed", myself.
However, it may not count as "Fantasy" or "Romance"... I'd argue the fantasy bit.
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@weasalopes Solo leveling might fall under Urban Fantasy
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@lotteliese said in Korean Fantasy/Romance Novels - Why don’t they ever get licensed?:
@weasalopes Solo leveling might fall under Urban Fantasy
One could label it as such, given the results of a quick web search; the genre is a tad more amorphous than I'd thought.
I think of stuff by Charles de Lint and that crowd, so kinda a different take on things than this series.
But if one looks at it as fantastic elements mixed in with modern urban settings, um, yeah, Solo Leveling really does fall inside the classification. -
I hope j-novel continues to focus on Japanese light novels.
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@freyr said in Korean Fantasy/Romance Novels - Why don’t they ever get licensed?:
I hope j-novel continues to focus on Japanese light novels.
While it's possible there are JNC staff members who could do stuff with other Asian languages than Japanese, to date that's the only Asian language they've been working with for translations.
If it weren't for the recent batch of European language works being brought over by JNC I'd have been willing to make grandiose (and fatuous) statements concerning JNC not doing any TLs of anything other than Japanese, with no actual basis for saying so...
There's a sufficient difference in 'feel' between most Japanese LN/Manga and the equivalent Korean & Chinese works that I'm still willing to make unfounded pronouncements to the effect that I consider it unlikely that JNC will branch out to including non-Japanese Asian lit.
