'Gyeongseong Creature' spin-off webtoon to be released

Poster for a spin-off webtoon series of "Gyeongseong Creature" (Kakao Entertainment)

Kakao Entertainment, a content arm under Korea’s IT giant Kakao Corp., said Friday that a spin-off webtoon series of the Netflix original "Gyeongseong Creature" will be released on Kakao Webtoon and KakaoPage starting Jan. 20.

Netflix's 10-part thriller drama "Gyeongseong Creature" centers around the stories of Jang Tae-sang (Park Seo-jun) and Yoon Chae-ok (Han So-hee), who infiltrate a hospital in the city of Gyeongseong (now Seoul) in 1945 -- where human experiments are held to turn people into monsters.

The spin-off webtoon series, set against the backdrop of Manwoldo, where another human experiment took place, will narrate the story of Geum-ran, who, instead of turning into a monster through the same experiment, transforms into a powerful being with human intelligence.

The official English title for the spin-off webtoon series is "Gyeongseong Creature : The Unwithering Flower."

"A new narrative is depicted with a focus on different characters within a connected universe, and the appearance of characters (in the webtoon series) like Chae-ok and Gato (from the Netflix drama series) creates an intersecting plot point, enriching and completing the narrative in a more intricate, deeper manner," said an official from Kakao Entertainment.

After its domestic launch on Jan. 20, "Gyeongseong Creature : The Unwithering Flower" is scheduled to be released in North America, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia through Kakao Entertainment's global webtoon platforms such as Tapas and Kakao Webtoon Thailand, but specific release dates have not been confirmed, according to Kakao Entertainment.

"Kakao Entertainment plans to actively strengthen its global IP competitiveness, by not only turning webtoon and web novels like 'Moving,' 'The Uncanny Counter,' and 'The Bequeathed' into visual content, but also by putting in continuous and proactive efforts to strengthen its IP value chain cases where stories and the media are connected, like 'Gyeongseong Creature,' 'Business Proposal' and 'Not Others,'" said the Kakao Entertainment official.

Kakao Entertainment added that, in anticipation of the launch of the webtoon series on Jan. 20 and the release of Part 2 of the "Gyeongseong Creature" drama series on Friday, KakaoPage and Kakao Webtoon will be conducting an event from Friday to Jan. 20, where users who sign up for webtoon launch notifications on Kakao Webtoon will receive special kits, including vouchers for its webtoon platform. The vouchers can be used to buy separate episodes of any webtoon series.

Additionally, KakaoPage will hold a draw for users who share the webtoon launch news with their friends, during which a chance to win a collaboration tea set between "Gyeongseong Creature" and Osulloc is offered to participants.

By Lee Yoon-seo(yoonseo.3348@heraldcorp.com)