Naver Webtoon said on Thursday it will run relay pop-up stores featuring popular intellectual property through the end of the year.

The plan is to bring the webtoon viewing experience on the platform into physical spaces to maximise a work's vitality and points of contact with fandoms.

The offline pop-up will be held through December at Dopamine Station on the third floor of I'Park Mall in Yongsan, Seoul. It will run from 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. It will rotate its featured webtoon IP at set intervals.

The first pop-up, running from Aug. 1 to 28, will feature the webtoon 'Our Guild Idol'. It will be organised under the concept of 'Dalmoori: Offline Guild Room', which realises the story's guild room setting in the real world. The venue will sell 44 new products including plush dolls, can badges and monitor stands, as well as 12 types of limited-edition photo cards and collected volumes, while also holding weekly participatory events.

Naver Webtoon has previously encouraged consumption of original works through digital communication services such as the artificial intelligence chatbot 'Bias' and 'Character Chat'. With this pop-up as a starting point, it will speed up expansion of the IP lifecycle to offline spaces. Follow-up lineups include 'Tears on Withered Flowers' and 'The S-Classes That I Raised', which are waiting to appear.

Kkobo (꼬보), the author of 'Our Guild Idol', said, "Thanks to Naver Webtoon creating a place where the work and the fandom can meet directly, I think readers will be able to feel the characters and world more closely." The author added, "I hope it becomes an opportunity to continue the story together going forward."

Kim Shin-hyung (김신형), who oversees Naver Webtoon's IP business, said, "Through this relay pop-up store, we will create points of contact where readers can enjoy the works they like more closely and keep the works' appeal going for a long time." Kim added, "We will expand the potential and vitality of webtoon IP."