Is LINE Korean or Japanese? Korean Companies in Japan Sorted

LINE passed 100 million monthly users in Japan at the end of 2025, by LY Corporation’s count, which makes “is LINE Korean?” a practical question rather than trivia for anyone sorting out Korean companies in Japan. The honest answer takes a sentence, not a word. LINE was launched by the Japanese subsidiary of a Korean internet company. Lotte was founded in Japan by a businessman born in Korea. The manga app Piccoma names Kakao Corp. as its parent on its own company page. Sorting any of them takes three questions: where the company was born, who owns it now, and where it is run from.

Quick answers

• LINE launched on June 23, 2011, at NHN Japan, a subsidiary that Korea’s NHN Corporation (now NAVER) set up in 2000, and LY Corporation in Tokyo runs it today.
• LY’s parent, A Holdings, held 62.4% of LY’s voting rights on March 31, 2026, and SoftBank Corp. and Naver each hold 50% of A Holdings.
• Lotte was founded in Japan in June 1948 by Korean-born Shin Kyuk-ho, and only 10 of the 298 companies in today’s Lotte Group are in Japan.

Is LINE Korean or Japanese?

LINE is Korean-born and Japanese-run: a Korean company’s Japanese subsidiary launched it, and a Japanese company that is half Korean-owned at the top operates it today. The corporate trail on LY Corporation’s own history page runs like this:

• September 2000: NHN Corporation, today’s NAVER Corporation, sets up Hangame Japan, an online-game company.
• August 2003: Hangame Japan renames itself NHN Japan.
• June 23, 2011: NHN Japan launches LINE. LY ties the app’s origin to the days after the Great East Japan Earthquake, when people struggled to reach family and friends.
• April 2013: NHN Japan becomes LINE Corporation.
• July 2016: LINE Corporation lists on the New York Stock Exchange and the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
• October 1, 2023: LINE Corporation, Z Holdings and Yahoo Japan merge, along with two smaller Z group units, into LY Corporation.

That last step is where “Korean or Japanese” gets complicated. LY Corporation is headquartered in Kioi Tower in Tokyo’s Chiyoda ward. Its parent, A Holdings, held 62.4% of LY’s voting rights on March 31, 2026, according to SoftBank Corp.’s investor page. SoftBank and NAVER each hold 50% of A Holdings, and SoftBank consolidates it as a subsidiary. Run the arithmetic and Naver’s half of A Holdings works out to about 31.2% of LY’s votes.

So the verdict depends on the question. Who made it? A Korean group’s Japanese arm. Who runs it? A Japanese company in Tokyo. Who owns it? Japan’s SoftBank and Korea’s Naver, in equal halves at the top. Back home, Naver is the company behind the Naver Pay wallet that visitors to Korea weigh against Kakao Pay.

Why Did Japan Push LINE Yahoo to Loosen Its Naver Ties?

Because a 2023 breach reached LY’s systems through Naver’s cloud arm, and Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) treated the shared systems and the shared ownership as one problem.

LY’s notice of November 27, 2023 traced the intrusion to malware on a PC used by an employee of a contractor that worked for both NAVER Cloud and LY. On October 9, 2023, the intruder got into LY’s systems by way of NAVER Cloud’s. The first count came to about 440,000 items of personal data: 302,569 concerning users (129,894 of them users in Japan), 86,105 concerning business partners and 51,353 concerning employees.

MIC issued administrative guidance on March 5, 2024, then a second round on April 16, 2024, after judging LY’s April 1 report insufficient. The April letter noted that, under LY’s own plan, full network separation from the Naver side was more than two years away. It asked LY and its parent companies to review a relationship in which LY was under “a considerable degree of capital control” by the Naver side, which was also its contractor, and to report concrete steps by July 1, 2024. The letter explained the pressure in one sentence: LINE is a service the great majority of Japan’s people use every day, and public bodies, local governments included, use it too.

Two years on, the operational split is done. LY’s recurrence-prevention page, last updated July 21, 2026, says development work outsourced to Naver ended in December 2025, LY and its subsidiaries stopped using Naver technology and systems at the end of March 2026, and leftover data was deleted by the end of June 2026. A few exceptions remain, such as risk-assessed off-the-shelf products, generic APIs and overseas business.

The ownership is a different story. SoftBank’s figures for March 31, 2026 still show the 50/50 A Holdings structure. LINE in Japan no longer runs on Naver’s systems, but Naver still owns half of the company at the top of the chain.

Is Lotte Korean or Japanese?

Lotte is Japanese by birth and Korean by founder, and today it describes itself as one group with headquarters in both Japan and South Korea. Lotte Co., Ltd. (株式会社ロッテ) dates its founding to June 1948, when it began making and selling chewing gum, and its company history names Takeo Shigemitsu as the first president. Shigemitsu was the Japanese name of Shin Kyuk-ho, who was born on October 4, 1921 in Ulsan, crossed to Japan in 1942 and, in Lotte’s Korean-side telling, founded Lotte there in June 1948. He took the name from Charlotte, the heroine of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.

The Lotte products Japan knows best were born in Japan: Ghana Milk Chocolate in February 1964, Koala’s March in March 1984, Xylitol gum in May 1997. Lotte Co., Ltd. is headquartered in Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo, so buy a box of Koala’s March at a Japanese convenience store and the company being paid is a Japanese one.

Korea came second. Once Korea and Japan normalized relations and investment became possible, Shin founded Lotte Confectionery in Korea in 1967 (now Lotte Wellfood). Hotel Lotte followed in 1973, Lotte Shopping in 1979 and Lotte World in 1989, and Korea’s holding company, Lotte Corporation, was set up in 2017. Measured by company count, the group’s weight now sits outside Japan: Lotte Holdings in Tokyo counts 298 group companies, and only 10 of them are in Japan.

Leadership spans the border as well. The founder’s second son, known in Japan as Akio Shigemitsu, is chairman and representative director of Lotte Holdings. Under his Korean name, Shin Dong-bin, he chairs the Korean Lotte Group, a post he has held since February 2011, according to the career summary Lotte Holdings published in 2015. The founder died on January 19, 2020. A yes-or-no answer to “is Lotte Korean?” is always half wrong: the operating company in Japan is Japanese, and the family and the group behind it belong to both countries.

Which Other Korean Companies in Japan Do People Use Every Day?

Beyond LINE and Lotte, a handful of names turn up on Japanese phones, store shelves and bar tables, and each sorts a little differently. Samsung is left out here because its Japan story, including the years when Galaxy phones were sold there without the Samsung logo, has its own explainer.

What people use in Japan	Company running it in Japan	Parent or controller	Verdict
LINE	LY Corporation, Tokyo	A Holdings (SoftBank 50%, Naver 50%)	Korean-born, Japanese-run, jointly owned
Koala’s March, Ghana	Lotte Co., Ltd., Tokyo	Lotte Group, based in Japan and Korea	Japanese company, Korean-born founder
Piccoma	Kakao Piccoma Corp., Tokyo	Kakao Corp., Korea	Korean-owned, run from Tokyo
LINE Manga, ebookjapan	LINE Digital Frontier	WEBTOON Entertainment group, Naver-controlled	Korean-controlled, not an LY subsidiary
Shin Ramyun	Nongshim Japan, Tokyo	Nongshim, Korea	Korean brand, Japanese sales arm
JINRO, Chamisul	Jinro Inc., Tokyo	HiteJinro, Korea	Korean brand, Japanese sales arm
Nexon games	Nexon Co., Ltd., Tokyo	NXC Corporation, Korea (about 47% with joint holders, June 2026)	Korean-born, Tokyo-based, Korean major shareholder

Piccoma. Kakao Piccoma launched the app on April 20, 2016. The company was founded in July 2011 as Kakao Japan, took its current name in November 2021, and its company outline lists Kakao Corp., the Korean company behind KakaoTalk, as its parent. Its 10th-anniversary release on April 20, 2026 cited Sensor Tower’s 2025 market rankings, which put Piccoma first in Japan for in-app purchase revenue among non-game apps, and gave cumulative downloads of 50 million as of March 2025.

LINE Manga and ebookjapan. The LINE name does not make it an LY subsidiary. LINE Digital Frontier, set up on July 2, 2018, runs LINE Manga, the ebookjapan e-book store and the bookfan online bookstore, and describes itself as part of the WEBTOON Entertainment group. WEBTOON Entertainment is headquartered in Los Angeles, and its annual report for 2024 calls it a “controlled company” in which NAVER controls a significant percentage of the voting power. LY sits further up the chain as a minority investor: its Schedule 13G filing with the US SEC put its stake at 24.5% of WEBTOON Entertainment’s shares on September 30, 2024.

Shin Ramyun. Nongshim Japan was set up on January 8, 2002 as Nongshim’s Japanese arm, and its company history frames the job as bringing “the taste of Korea” to Japanese tables. By its own figures, sales in Japan reached ¥10 billion in 2021, and the Shin Ramyun brand alone reached ¥10 billion in 2023. Samyang’s Buldak noodles come from a different Korean maker and are compared flavor by flavor in Buldak Carbonara vs Original Spicy.

JINRO and Chamisul. JINRO went on sale in Japan in August 1979, nine years before Jinro Japan was set up in October 1988. That company, renamed Jinro Inc. in May 2012 and based in Roppongi, described itself in its renaming notice as the Japanese corporation of HiteJinro in Korea. It launched Chamisul in a 360 ml bottle in April 2001.

Nexon. Nexon made the reverse journey. It was founded in Seoul, moved its head office to Japan in 2005 and listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 2011, and its registered head office is in Roppongi 1-chome. Its address is Japanese, but its major shareholder is not. In a June 2026 filing, NXC Corporation, registered in Jeju, Korea, reported holding 31.35% of Nexon’s shares, and 47.33% together with the two co-filers on the same report.

How Can You Check Who Owns a Brand in Japan?

Read the company outline, not the logo. Start with the company’s 会社概要 (kaisha gaiyō, company outline) page and look for the line marked 親会社 (oyagaisha, parent company). In Kakao Piccoma’s case you’ll find it in a single row that reads Kakao Corp. LINE Digital Frontier’s recruiting page lists WEBTOON Entertainment, NAVER WEBTOON and LY Corporation as its main related companies, which is how the LINE Manga split shows up in plain text.

Names are weak evidence. Lotte sounds European because it comes from Goethe. LINE sounds like nothing in particular. Nexon is a Tokyo-listed company that started in Seoul and has a major shareholder registered in Jeju.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is Yahoo! JAPAN owned by a Korean company now?

Partly, and only at the top of the chain. Yahoo Japan Corporation merged into LY Corporation on October 1, 2023, so Yahoo! JAPAN and LINE share one operator and one parent, A Holdings, which SoftBank and Naver own 50/50. SoftBank consolidates A Holdings as a subsidiary, so in accounting terms LY sits inside the SoftBank group.

Q: Is Qoo10 a Korean shopping site?

No, its operator is eBay. Qoo10’s Japanese marketplace is run by eBay Japan G.K., which eBay Inc. set up in 2018 to operate the site. Whatever the mix of Korean products in its listings, the operator is the Japanese unit of an American company.

Q: Are the Chiba Lotte Marines owned by a Korean company?

They sit on the Japanese side of Lotte. Lotte’s Japanese group page lists the Chiba Lotte Marines, a Pacific League club, among its group companies, and Akio Shigemitsu (Shin Dong-bin) became the club’s representative director and acting owner in March 1995. Korea has its own Lotte club, the Lotte Giants, which Lotte Holdings’ group history dates to 1982.

Q: Is LINE Manga part of LINE Yahoo?

Not as a subsidiary, though LY Corporation held 24.5% of WEBTOON Entertainment, the group’s parent, in a 2024 SEC filing. Its operator, LINE Digital Frontier, belongs to the Naver-controlled WEBTOON Entertainment group and lists LY Corporation among its related companies. That same operator merged with eBOOK Initiative Japan, effective September 1, 2024, came out as the surviving company, and now runs ebookjapan as well.

Whether the name on the screen is LINE, Lotte or Piccoma, each gives a different answer to “Korean or Japanese?”, and the reliable habit is to ask the three follow-ups every time: born where, owned by whom, run from where.