WEBTOON didn’t look outside for its next leader. It handed the keys to the strategist who built the plan. Yongsoo Kim’s elevation from strategy chief to President is a masterclass in what happens when you let the architect run the house.
When WEBTOON Entertainment elevated Yongsoo Kim to President, effective March 2, 2026, the Los Angeles-based storytelling giant made a bet too few companies are brave enough to make: it promoted the person who designed the strategy to be the one who executes it. Kim, previously Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global WEBTOON, now leads global operations and joins the board of directors, reporting to founder and CEO Junkoo Kim. Senior leadership across the company now reports to him.
The path that brought him here reads like a case study. Kim joined WEBTOON in late 2022 and quickly became indispensable, strengthening the company’s financial foundation and playing a leading role in its landmark 2024 IPO. As Chief Strategy Officer, he drove the global initiatives that knit the company’s U.S., Korean, and international operations into a single engine, most visibly architecting WEBTOON’s high-profile collaboration with The Walt Disney Company in 2025. Before WEBTOON, he was a Principal at KKR, a member of the founding team of Tesla’s Korea operations, and an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company. He holds a business degree from Yonsei University. Strategy, capital, startups, and scale: he has lived all four.
Founder and CEO Junkoo Kim did not hedge in explaining the promotion:
“Yongsoo has demonstrated exceptional leadership, combining innovation with operational discipline and a proven ability to translate strategy into measurable results… Yongsoo’s elevation to President reinforces our commitment to disciplined execution as we scale globally.”
Junkoo Kim, Founder & CEO, WEBTOON Entertainment
That phrase, translate strategy into measurable results, is the whole story. There is a chronic gap in most companies between the people who craft the vision and the people who deliver it. Elevating a strategy chief to President closes that gap in a single move. The architect and the builder become the same person, and nothing gets lost in the handoff.
There is a lesson here for every founder wrestling with succession and scale. Vision is abundant; execution is rare. The leaders who compound value are the ones who can hold both, dreaming big while shipping relentlessly. By naming a strategist as its President, WEBTOON is declaring which muscle it intends to build next: disciplined, measurable execution, at global scale.
It is also a reminder that the best leadership pipelines are built, not bought. WEBTOON could have run a splashy global executive search for an outside name. Instead it rewarded the operator who had already proven himself against its hardest problems. That is the promote-and-trust playbook great companies run: identify the person quietly carrying the weight, and hand them the wheel.
The mandate is ambitious. Kim takes over global operations at a company positioning itself as the world’s storytelling technology platform, one that turns web comics and serialized fiction into a pipeline for film and television. With Wattpad in its portfolio and a growing slate of screen adaptations, WEBTOON sits at the intersection of technology and storytelling, exactly the frontier where the next generation of media companies will be won or lost.
And it plants another flag for Los Angeles. As the region’s entertainment hiring boom reshapes who runs the next generation of media companies, WEBTOON’s L.A. headquarters makes Kim’s rise part of a broader Southern California talent story: a global, tech-forward entertainment economy that increasingly grows and promotes its own leaders rather than importing them.
To Yongsoo Kim: congratulations. The person who writes the strategy should get to live the ending, and now you will.
Know a leader who deserves this spotlight?
This is what we do at Recruiter Hustle: we don’t just report the move, we honor the person behind it. If you, your company, or someone you admire just stepped into a new chapter, we want to tell that story right.
→ Submit a People Move • or reach out to Cathy Trinh directly, and let’s put your name in the light.
HEART. HUMAN. HUSTLE.
Sources & verification
Appointment & quote: WEBTOON / Business Wire · Variety · Deadline
Chief Talent Strategist & Editor-in-Chief | 26-year global recruiting veteran, #1 bestselling author, cancer survivor & humanitarian. Founder of Recruiter Hustle, OC/LA's no-filter media platform for talent, finance & recruiting professionals. Heart. Human. Hustle.