How to Apply to KakaoPage

8 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 1 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Apply through recruit.kakaoent.com — Kakao Entertainment's in-house Korean careers portal — rather than expecting a Greenhouse, Workday, or Lever flow.
  • Korean-language materials are strongly preferred for Pangyo HQ roles; English is acceptable for global subsidiaries (Tapas, Radish, Wuxiaworld, Piccoma).
  • Solo Leveling's 2024-2025 anime success is a real tailwind for KakaoPage, but NAVER Webtoon's WBTN IPO has intensified global competition.
  • Kakao Group's parent-level regulatory turmoil — including Brian Kim's July 2024 arrest tied to the SM Entertainment acquisition — is a real factor to weigh, even though Kakao Entertainment operations continue normally.
  • Expect Korean tech industry long-hours culture during content launches and platform incidents, despite official 52-hour-week policy.
  • Co-CEO structure (Lee Jin-soo + Kim Sung-soo) reflects the post-2021 merger of Kakao M and KakaoPage Corp; org navigation is more complex than a single-founder startup.
  • IP literacy — actually understanding why specific webtoons, web novels, K-dramas, or albums work — is a genuine differentiator across all functions.
  • Salary and total comp sit within Korean big-tech bands; meaningful equity upside is limited because Kakao Entertainment is a private subsidiary, not separately listed.

About KakaoPage

KakaoPage (카카오페이지) is the flagship Korean webtoon and web novel platform operated by Kakao Entertainment Corporation (카카오엔터테인먼트), a private subsidiary of Kakao Corp (KOSPI: 035720). Kakao Entertainment was formed in March 2021 through the merger of Kakao M, KakaoPage Corp, and several smaller content units, consolidating music, film, drama, webtoon, and web novel businesses under a single entity. The company is co-led by Co-CEOs Lee Jin-soo (이진수, formerly head of KakaoPage) and Kim Sung-soo (김성수, formerly head of Kakao M), and employs roughly 2,000+ people across its Pangyo, Gyeonggi-do headquarters and satellite offices, with the KakaoPage platform team forming a meaningful subset of that headcount. The company operates in three broad segments. The Story segment covers webtoons and web novels through KakaoPage and Kakao Webtoon (formerly Daum Webtoon, renamed in 2021) in Korea, plus Tapas Media (acquired 2021 for roughly $510M), Radish Media (~$440M), and Wuxiaworld (~$37M, focused on Chinese xianxia and wuxia translations) for English-speaking markets. The Media segment, descended from Kakao M, runs music labels including StarShip Entertainment, Antenna, IST Entertainment, and Edam Entertainment, plus film and drama production with stakes in Showbox and significant content investment. The Game segment is a separate listed company, Kakao Games (KOSPI: 293490), and is not part of Kakao Entertainment hiring. The KakaoPage app itself reaches roughly 10M+ monthly active users in Korea and is best known for hit titles like Solo Leveling, which became a global phenomenon after A-1 Pictures' 2024 anime adaptation and 2025 second season, alongside Lookism, The Pawn's Revenge, Tower of God (also on Naver Webtoon), Bastard, and The Boxer. The platform's core monetization model is the 'wait or pay' microtransaction loop — readers either wait a fixed window for a free episode or pay to unlock immediately — supplemented by daily free episodes and bulk pass purchases. Competitively, KakaoPage sits as Korea's #2 webtoon platform behind NAVER Webtoon (Webtoon Entertainment, NASDAQ: WBTN, IPO June 2024), with Lezhin Comics (KOSDAQ: 287410), Kidari Studio, Toomics, and Toptoon also in the market. Globally, Tapas competes with NAVER's Webtoon app for the English-speaking audience, while Kakao Piccoma — a Japanese subsidiary — holds the #1 webtoon app spot in Japan. Note that Kakao Group is under sustained regulatory scrutiny following Brian Kim's July 2024 arrest on stock manipulation charges tied to the SM Entertainment acquisition; while Kakao Entertainment operations have continued, the parent group's reputational and legal turmoil is a real factor candidates should weigh.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Search openings at recruit

    Search openings at recruit.kakaoent.com — Kakao Entertainment's in-house Korean careers portal that covers KakaoPage, Kakao Webtoon, Kakao M music labels, and content production roles.

  2. 2
    Create an account on the recruit portal using a Korean phone number where possib

    Create an account on the recruit portal using a Korean phone number where possible; some flows accept email-only signup but Korean residency information is requested for tax and onboarding.

  3. 3
    Filter by job family

    Filter by job family — common categories are Service Planning (서비스 기획), Engineering (개발), Editorial (편집), Content/IP (콘텐츠/IP), Design, Marketing, and Business Development (사업개발).

  4. 4
    Submit a Korean-language resume (이력서) and cover letter (자기소개서) through the porta

    Submit a Korean-language resume (이력서) and cover letter (자기소개서) through the portal — for global roles in Tapas, Radish, or Wuxiaworld, English materials are accepted but Korean is preferred for HQ-based positions.

  5. 5
    Expect document screening (서류전형) within 1-3 weeks; outcomes are communicated via

    Expect document screening (서류전형) within 1-3 weeks; outcomes are communicated via the portal and email, and silence past 3-4 weeks usually means rejection.

  6. 6
    Complete any required assignments

    Complete any required assignments — engineering roles often involve a coding test on programmers.co.kr or a take-home, while planning and editorial roles may include a portfolio or written exercise on a chosen webtoon or feature.

  7. 7
    Attend a first-round interview (1차 면접) with the hiring team

    Attend a first-round interview (1차 면접) with the hiring team — typically 60-90 minutes covering past projects, product reasoning, and culture fit; mostly Korean, with English mixed in for global teams.

  8. 8
    Attend an executive or culture-fit interview (2차 면접 / 임원면접) with leadership; que

    Attend an executive or culture-fit interview (2차 면접 / 임원면접) with leadership; questions probe long-term motivation, alignment with Kakao Entertainment values, and your read on the webtoon industry.

  9. 9
    Provide reference checks and complete a background check (경력증명서, 학위증명서)

    Provide reference checks and complete a background check (경력증명서, 학위증명서) — standard Korean documentation requirements apply.

  10. 10
    Receive an offer with base salary, performance bonus structure, and Kakao stock-

    Receive an offer with base salary, performance bonus structure, and Kakao stock-based compensation where applicable; negotiation is possible but tends to be modest within Korean salary bands.

Resume Tips for KakaoPage

recommended

Submit your resume in Korean unless the posting explicitly invites English — mos

Submit your resume in Korean unless the posting explicitly invites English — most KakaoPage HQ roles default to Korean review, and translated documents signal global subsidiary fit (Tapas, Radish, Wuxiaworld) more than Pangyo HQ fit.

recommended

Lead with quantified product or content outcomes — MAU growth, ARPPU lift, episo

Lead with quantified product or content outcomes — MAU growth, ARPPU lift, episode read-through rate, IP licensing revenue, or readership retention numbers carry more weight than abstract responsibilities.

recommended

Name specific webtoons, web novels, anime, dramas, or albums you worked on or st

Name specific webtoons, web novels, anime, dramas, or albums you worked on or studied — Kakao Entertainment is a content-first company and demonstrating IP literacy distinguishes serious candidates.

recommended

For engineering roles, include scale figures honestly — Kakao Entertainment's tr

For engineering roles, include scale figures honestly — Kakao Entertainment's traffic is substantial but not FAANG-tier, so claims of '100M+ MAU' or 'billions of requests' will be scrutinized against KakaoPage's actual ~10M MAU footprint.

recommended

Highlight any experience with Korean tech stack norms — Kotlin/Spring Boot, MySQ

Highlight any experience with Korean tech stack norms — Kotlin/Spring Boot, MySQL/Redis, Kafka, AWS, and Kubernetes are common; React or Vue for frontend; Python for data and ML.

recommended

Show language depth where it exists — Korean (native or business), English (for

Show language depth where it exists — Korean (native or business), English (for global expansion teams), Japanese (for Piccoma-adjacent work), and Chinese (for Wuxiaworld and translation pipelines) are all valued.

recommended

If you have webtoon, manhwa, manga, or anime fandom credentials, mention them ta

If you have webtoon, manhwa, manga, or anime fandom credentials, mention them tactfully — passion for the medium is a real signal, but performative fandom without industry literacy reads as thin.

recommended

Avoid inflating titles common in Western resumes — Korean reviewers expect liter

Avoid inflating titles common in Western resumes — Korean reviewers expect literal accuracy, and 'Senior Director' for a 3-person team will damage credibility rather than enhance it.

recommended

Include education prominently — Korean hiring still weighs SKY (Seoul National,

Include education prominently — Korean hiring still weighs SKY (Seoul National, Korea, Yonsei) and other top university affiliations, though this is softening at content companies relative to traditional chaebols.

recommended

Add a clear 'reason for applying' (지원 동기) section in your cover letter that name

Add a clear 'reason for applying' (지원 동기) section in your cover letter that names a specific KakaoPage product, webtoon, or strategic move — generic interest in 'global content' will not differentiate you.

ATS System: Kakao Entertainment Custom Recruit Portal (recruit.kakaoent.com)

Kakao Entertainment runs an in-house Korean ATS at recruit.kakaoent.com rather than a third-party platform like Greenhouse, Workday, or Lever. The portal is built for Korean hiring conventions, with separate Korean and English UI flows, document upload for 이력서 and 자기소개서, and tracked statuses for document screening, assignment, interview, and final result stages. As a custom system, parsing behavior is less predictable than commercial ATS products — formatting matters more than usual.

  • Submit PDF resumes with embedded fonts to avoid Korean character rendering issues — DOCX uploads sometimes lose Hangul formatting on the recruiter side.
  • Use a clean single-column layout — multi-column resumes parse poorly in custom Korean ATS tools and may scramble section order for reviewers.
  • Fill out the structured profile fields on recruit.kakaoent.com in addition to uploading your resume — recruiters often filter on portal fields rather than reading every PDF.
  • Write your 자기소개서 directly in the portal text fields when prompted rather than uploading a separate document — the structured prompts (motivation, strengths, growth experience) are scored individually.
  • Use Korean keywords from the job posting verbatim where they apply to your background — the portal's internal search relies on literal matching more than semantic parsing.
  • Save draft applications frequently — the portal has session timeouts that can wipe long-form Korean text input if you draft without saving.
  • Check the portal weekly after applying — status updates appear there before email notifications in many cases.

Interview Culture

Interviews at Kakao Entertainment blend Korean tech industry conventions with content-company sensibilities.

The first round is typically conducted by the hiring team — a mix of the direct manager, a peer, and sometimes a cross-functional partner — and lasts 60 to 90 minutes. Expect a deep walk-through of your most relevant project, followed by scenario questions about how you would approach a specific KakaoPage or Kakao Webtoon problem. Engineering interviews include live coding or system design, often in Korean unless the role is explicitly global, and assignments are usually take-home with a walk-through discussion in the live session. Planning and editorial roles probe your reading of the webtoon market, your view on a specific title's success or failure, and how you would prioritize features or content investments under real budget and headcount constraint. The second round is usually with senior leadership or executives and leans heavily on culture fit, long-term motivation, and your read on Kakao Entertainment's strategic position. Expect questions about why this company over NAVER Webtoon, how you think about the Solo Leveling tailwind, where you see the global webtoon market heading, and how you would defend a contrarian product or content bet to skeptical leadership. Honest, specific answers outperform polished generalities, and visible thinking under pressure tends to score better than rehearsed talking points. Korean business etiquette applies — formal language (존댓말), structured self-introduction, and respectful handling of disagreement are baseline expectations. Interviewers may speak frankly about the Brian Kim arrest and Kakao Group's broader regulatory exposure if you raise it; be prepared to discuss whether that affects your decision without being evasive or alarmist.

What KakaoPage Looks For

  • Genuine literacy in webtoons, web novels, K-pop, K-drama, or anime — not just consumer fandom but an analytical view of why specific IP succeeds or fails.
  • Product judgment grounded in user behavior data — KakaoPage's wait-or-pay model is metrics-driven and decisions are defended with retention, conversion, and ARPPU numbers.
  • Engineering fundamentals at Korean big-tech standards — clean code, system design under load, and pragmatic trade-offs rather than over-architected solutions.
  • Korean-language fluency for HQ roles, with English depth a strong plus for global expansion teams (Tapas, Radish, Wuxiaworld, Piccoma-adjacent work).
  • Comfort with co-CEO and matrixed reporting structures — Kakao Entertainment's post-merger org chart is more complex than a single-founder startup.
  • Tolerance for Korean tech long-hours culture — official policy is 52-hour weeks, but content-launch and platform-incident periods commonly stretch beyond that.
  • Thoughtfulness about Kakao Group's 2024 regulatory exposure — candidates who can engage honestly with the Brian Kim situation without being naive or dismissive land better.
  • Cross-functional collaboration skills — the org runs editorial, planning, engineering, and IP teams in tight loops, and siloed working styles struggle.
  • Long-term motivation tied to the medium — webtoon and web novel work is creatively demanding and a transactional 'next job' framing is read as a yellow flag.
  • Pragmatism about NAVER Webtoon competition — Kakao Entertainment is the underdog globally post-WBTN IPO, and candidates who can articulate that honestly are valued.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is KakaoPage a separate company from Kakao Entertainment?
KakaoPage is a product platform; Kakao Entertainment Corporation is the operating company. The two were unified when Kakao M, KakaoPage Corp, and other units merged in March 2021 to form Kakao Entertainment, which now operates KakaoPage, Kakao Webtoon, Tapas, Radish, Wuxiaworld, and the Kakao M music labels under one corporate roof.
Is Kakao Entertainment publicly traded?
No. Kakao Entertainment is a private subsidiary of Kakao Corp (KOSPI: 035720). An IPO was discussed in 2022-2023 but has not materialized. Kakao Games (KOSPI: 293490) is a separate listed entity and is not part of Kakao Entertainment hiring.
Do I need to speak Korean to work at KakaoPage?
For Pangyo HQ roles, yes — Korean fluency is effectively required for daily work, interviews, and documentation. For global subsidiary roles at Tapas (US), Radish (US), Wuxiaworld (US), or Kakao Piccoma (Japan), English or Japanese can be sufficient, with Korean as a strong plus.
Where is Kakao Entertainment headquartered?
The headquarters are in Pangyo, Seongnam, Gyeonggi-do — Korea's tech corridor south of Seoul, where most major Korean tech companies (Kakao, NAVER, NCsoft, Krafton, Nexon) are clustered. Some teams operate from Seoul offices.
What ATS does Kakao Entertainment use?
Kakao Entertainment runs a custom in-house ATS at recruit.kakaoent.com rather than a commercial product like Greenhouse, Workday, or Lever. The portal supports Korean and English UI and handles document screening, assignments, and interview tracking internally.
How long does the hiring process take?
Typically 4 to 8 weeks from application to offer. Document screening takes 1-3 weeks, assignments add 1-2 weeks, and two interview rounds plus reference checks fill the rest. Engineering and senior roles can run longer.
Does the Brian Kim arrest affect Kakao Entertainment hiring?
Operationally, Kakao Entertainment has continued hiring and content production through the Kakao Group regulatory turmoil. Reputationally, it is a real factor — interviewers may discuss it, and candidates should be prepared to engage honestly without being naive or alarmist about Kakao Corp's 2024 stock manipulation investigation tied to the SM Entertainment acquisition.
How does KakaoPage compete with NAVER Webtoon?
KakaoPage is Korea's #2 webtoon platform behind NAVER Webtoon (now Webtoon Entertainment, NASDAQ: WBTN, IPO June 2024). NAVER leads globally with Lore Olympus, True Beauty, and the original Solo Leveling rights; KakaoPage counters with strong Korean exclusives, Solo Leveling distribution rights for some regions, and global subsidiaries Tapas, Radish, and Wuxiaworld.
What is Kakao Piccoma's relationship to Kakao Entertainment?
Kakao Piccoma is a Japanese subsidiary controlled by Kakao Corp that operates Japan's #1 webtoon app. It is a separately controlled entity — an IPO was planned in 2022 then cancelled — and roles there are typically posted separately from Kakao Entertainment HQ openings, with Japanese-language work.
What is the work culture like?
A hybrid of Korean tech long-hours norms and content-company creative pace. Official policy follows Korea's 52-hour weekly cap, but launches, platform incidents, and editorial deadlines commonly stretch beyond that. Expect formal Korean business etiquette, strong cross-functional collaboration, and a co-CEO matrix that adds organizational complexity.
Is there equity compensation?
Equity-style compensation can include Kakao Corp parent stock awards or restricted units, depending on role and seniority. Because Kakao Entertainment itself is private, there is no direct subsidiary equity. Total comp sits within Korean big-tech bands rather than US FAANG ranges.
Do they hire foreign nationals?
Yes, particularly for global expansion teams (Tapas, Radish, Wuxiaworld, Piccoma) and specific engineering or AI roles in Pangyo. Visa sponsorship is possible but adds friction; Korean-language ability significantly improves the path for HQ-based roles.

Open Positions

KakaoPage currently has 1 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 1 open positions at KakaoPage

Related Resources

Related Articles

Sources

  1. Kakao Entertainment Official Careers Portal —
  2. Kakao Entertainment Corporate Site —
  3. Kakao Corp Investor Relations (KOSPI: 035720) —
  4. KakaoPage Service Site —
  5. Webtoon Entertainment IPO Filing (NASDAQ: WBTN) —
  6. Reuters — Kakao Founder Brian Kim Arrested Over SM Entertainment Stock Manipulation —
  7. Kakao Entertainment Acquires Tapas Media and Radish —
  8. Solo Leveling Anime Adaptation Coverage —
  9. Kakao Piccoma Japan Market Position —
  10. Wuxiaworld Acquisition by Kakao Entertainment —
  11. Korea 52-Hour Workweek Policy Overview (Ministry of Employment and Labor) —
  12. Kakao Games Separate Listing (KOSPI: 293490) —