CONTENTA:

Contenta is an online market place that facilitates transactions of gigs between freelance writers and creators and corporate clients that are in need various content for their commercial publications such as stories, news articles, press releases, marketing consulting and even info graphics. Launched with the slogan "Create content easily at scale", Contenta  has a total of 694 registered freelance writers, editors and marketers' who have so far submitted a combined total of 567 projects for 247 corporate clients. As the submitted articles are being screened and edited by its internal staff before final delivery to the clients, the company claims it can assure quality of its content. Prices range from free to KRW5,000,000. It is possible that its future client list may include existing news media that wish to outsource editorial gigs.

DIA TV:

Meet Carrie, the creator and presenter of Carrie and Toys, one of the most successful names in South Korean personal media. She rose to stardom in personal media by targeting preschool kids and toddlers, and creating how-to videos that are useful for kids when they play with their toys. Called "creators" in South Korea for they usually create video content and upload their creations to their dedicated YouTube channel, they easily log millions of views per video. Brightest stars in personal media are known to earn up to U$50,000 per month from the advertising revenue sharing platform facilitated by YouTube. And CJ E&M, a mainstream South Korean media, has recently opened DIA TV, a multi channel network and dedicated incubation platform for the creators of personal media content, in an attempt to capitalize on such rising trend in personal media. And there are even talent management agencies popping up here for those creators to facilitate their content production and distribution as well as possible endorsement deals with commercial brands. DIA TV has recently thrown a big party for the creators and YouTube streamers in Seoul and attracted nearly 30,000 creators and their fans as well as industry professionals to COEX where the event was held. For all practical purpose, they are creators, channels and media entrepreneurs as they capitalize on the handy existing online tools to project their star power to target audience. The delegation will be able to gain unique local insights on the so-called Multi Channel Network by visiting DIA TV headquartered in DMC.   

JOONGANG ILBO:

The Joongang Ilbo, one of the top three South Korean dailies launched in 1965 with the financial backing of Samsung, has also been the forerunner in terms of online adaptation of its news services. In fact, its news site launched in March 1995 was the first news web site ever opened by any South Korean daily. The South Korean daily now owned and headed by Hong Seok-Hyun, former president of WAN-IFRA, has been pushing for an ambitious plan to grow as the country's largest news portal on the basis of a synergy it could create by integrating its news site and affiliated online publications, but the ambition was shattered as portals have eventually risen as the No. 1 destination for South Korean online news readers. The VDZ delegation will meet the company's chief of digital content strategy and listen to their future plan to sustain its leadership in online news.  

NAVER:

Started in 1998 as an in-house venture start-up of Samsung SDS, Naver has since risen as South Korea's Google as it succeeded in buliding up initial user base on the strengh of its search algorithm. With the recent successful IPO of Line Japan in NYSE, the portal is riding the crest of another explosive growth curve. The portal, however, has been the target of constant criticism locally since it attempted to lock in their users by siphoning off almost entire Web pages in South Korea. Back in 1997 when most of the Korean portals were launched, however, the total number of websites that existed in the Korean language sphere was barely over five thousand. For the Korean portals that were desperate to entice early Internet users, simply archiving the puny number of Web sites did not make any sense. The popular content providers at the time were news sites operated by the familiar names in mainstream media. Following the path of AOL that worked so well during the early days of dial-up connectivity, Naver decided to build their own "walled garden" on the net, where users would create content themselves or copy and paste other content they found elsewhere. This strategy worked well for Naver and other portals.

What is notable is the portal's uneasy relationship with South Korean news sites. While the portal has grown on the explosive growth of online news consumption of its visitors within the walled garden it built, South Korean news media that underestimated the potential threat of Naver and other portals have been complacent simply earning some hard cash in return for the supply of its new content to the portals. As South Korean portals including Naver and Kakao maintain their own news editors who edit and put news content they bought from other news media on their own news page, they have been criticized for having behaved like other politically- and socially driven news media and for having attempted to set the direction of political and social discourse of the country in the process. Despite such potential risk, Naver and other South Korean portals have never been able to give up news service, since news is the No.1 driver of traffic for them.

And as with other local Webtoon services that have successfuly monetized their mobile content, Naver Webtoon service has been equally successful in monitizing Webtoon traffic by learning diverse pricing and versioning tactics from Korean online game sites.

SAMSUNG:

Seoul-Suwon corridor can be compared to US Route 101 in the Bay Area, probably the busiest highway route in the country just as Freeway 101 is constantly crowded with Silicon Valley traffic commuting between San Francisco and San Jose. With its newly relocated head office complete with central R&D center and earlier production facility built around the founding days of Samsung, Suwon can be likened to Valley's San Jose. The delegation will be shown to the company's high-tech showroom that displays its latest line-up of products and some hints over future products in store as well as a tour of the corporate history museum before an one-on-one session with the company's B2B solution unit (TBC) for more in-depth discussion on the electronics giant's future business development.

TOPTOON / BOMTOON:

Essentially a Bookpal in online comics a.k.a. Webtoon in South Korea, Top Comics is one of the brightest stars in South Korean Webtoon business with some ten million paying customers accumulated as of August 2015. The company runs two service brands depending on their target audience: TopToon tailored for males readers and BomToon for female readers. Their monetization tactics is based on the time-version model: if you want to know what happened to him/her NOW instead of waiting one more week, pay now. It is also full of adult-only content: adult content seems to be the most promising content for now in terms of monetizing mobile content in South Korea. The company's combined revenue has added up to KRW32billions as of March 2016. Find out for yourself if the same content sales model can also be applied to European smartphone users.

More on Webtoon: Asia's (World's) largest comic market is Japan. Japan leads the global comic market in every indicator known to us including number of printed comic books available anytime and anywhere. When it comes to Webtoon (Web cartoons), though, South Korea is leading the show. Top portal sites update hundreds of Webtoon everyday, and those stories proven popular among Korean online users are often turned into a big-budget movie. In fact, a Webtoon-turned-film was a box office champion early this year in the local multiplex theaters. The author of the Webtoon had published weekly installments of his work in the No. 2 portal--Daum.

Whereas Japan's Webtoon usually appear in the form of simple e-book converted directly from their paper counterpart, South Korean Webtoon are targeted solely at online audience from the very start with matching story telling techniques that fully capitalize on the unique opportunities online space can offer: skyscraper panes proposed by Scott McCloud, hyperlink jump, flash animation, sound effects and even musical scores written exclusively for Webtoon. In short, they are optimized for the full potential of the Web sphere and for the smartphone screen.

On top of the unique artistic frontier South Korean Webtoon artists have exploited so far, equally interesting experiments are being conducted on the business front as well: partial micro payment and Apple Appstore-style revenue sharing model, time versioning (dying to know next week's story in advance? Click this pay site), Google Ad sense-style click-through advertisement, sales of Webtoon print copies and even product (and brand) placement. Industry observers estimate that combined total revenue of South Korean web toons would grow to U$2billion by 2017.