Dongju yoon Kwang -sik
Yoon Kwang-sik, co-founder of Dongju. Photo = Dongju

yoon Kwang-sik and Oh Se-jin, the co-founders of the startup Dongju, have been named to the Forbes ’30 Under 30 Asia’ list for 2025. The recognition comes as a result of their work developing technology aimed at enhancing the efficiency of webtoon production.

The pair were selected in the ‘Social Media, Marketing & Advertising’ category, marking the first time a webtoon industry founder has been included in this sector.

Forbes annually recognizes notable young leaders in various fields across Asia. This year’s list also includes K-pop group Stray Kids, actor cha Eun-woo, actress Ha Ye-rin, group Big Ocean, Chef Kwon Sung-joon, sculptor Jung Yu-jin, and AI startup Cox Wave.

Yoon Kwang-sik and Oh Se-jin established Dongju in 2022 with the goal of streamlining the artist onboarding process in webtoon production.

Their platform, ‘Spinnoff’, uses an algorithm to automatically match artists with suitable projects by analyzing the concept of the webtoon and the artist’s unique style.

Dongju oh Se -jin
Oh Se-jin, co-founder of Dongju. Photo = Dongju

Oh Se-jin stated, “We are pleased to make a name on a meaningful list as a webtoon industry entrepreneur. We will try to create competitive contents in the global market as it means to change the structure of the webtoon industry using technology.”

Along with its matching platform, Dongju also produces webtoons based on original web novels. One such webtoon, ‘The daughter of the villain planning to run away from the villain’s daughter’, which utilized Spinnoff, has garnered 7.4 million views on kakao Page and has been exported to Japan, the United States, France, and Germany.

Dongju has also adapted the web novel ‘Love Letter from the Future’ into a webtoon.