Nipponica

Executives from South Korea’s Naver and Japan’s SoftBank Group said they would jointly own the operator of Line, a South Korean-developed messaging app popularized in Japan. They gave the project a code name that emphasized cooperation: Gaia.

But late last year, cracks started opening in the Naver-Softbank venture.

Paywalled, but a good retelling of a century of strained relations between Japan and South Korea through the tale of a little green app called Line. For me, the cute stickers are the only good part of the Line ecosystem. The messaging portion of the app remains much like it was a decade ago and competitors like WhatsApp and Messages are taking laps around it. But it is still the king of text communication in Japan and no one seems able to topple it.