Wattpad, a 14-year-old storytelling platform based in Toronto and supported by venture capital, is being purchased by Naver, a large South Korean company, in a transaction valued at $600 million in cash and stock.

Naver intends to integrate at least a portion of Wattpad’s operations into Webtoon, another of its businesses. Naver originally created Webtoon in 2004, expanded it to the U.S. in 2014, and it now showcases thousands of comic strips submitted by its users, attracting a substantial audience. As reported by Naver, Webtoon averaged over 67 million monthly users as of August of last year.

The acquisition seems logical considering current market trends. According to reports from Korea’s Pulse News, some webtoons originating in the region are gaining wider international recognition and being adapted into films. (Below is a preview for a well-known series titled “The Secret of Angel.”)

Wattpad, which began as an e-reading application, has developed into a widely used platform where creators share their original writing, and over 90 million individuals visit each month to read it. (A recent article in The Verge noted that Wattpad has published over a billion stories to date, with its users collectively spending 22 billion minutes each month reading them.)

Similar to Webtoon, Wattpad has been concentrating on streaming media, responding to the demand for new content from various platforms, including Netflix, Apple, and other companies like GoJek’s GoPlay, which was launched in 2019 by the Indonesian ride-hailing service. (In addition to Wattpad Studios, Wattpad also established a book publishing division in 2019.)

Jun Koo Kim, CEO of Webtoon, stated in a press release regarding the new partnership that it signifies a “significant advancement toward our goal of becoming a prominent global multimedia entertainment company.”

Seong-Sook Han, CEO of Naver — a major search engine whose holdings include the popular messaging app Line, based in Tokyo — announced in a separate statement that Wattpad’s co-founders, Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen, will remain in their leadership positions after the acquisition.

The benefit of this acquisition for Wattpad’s investors appears to be moderate. (Determining the exact impact is difficult without knowing the specific investment terms for each party.)

Over the years, Wattpad secured $117.8 million in funding from investors in Asia, the United States, and Canada, with its latest funding round totaling $51 million from Tencent Holdings, BDC, Globe Telecom’s Kickstart Ventures, Peterson Group, Canso, and Raine Ventures.

That most recent investment, announced in 2018, valued the company at $398 million post-money, according to PitchBook.