San Francisco – Viki, the global TV site powered by fans, announced it has acquired Soompi, the world’s largest English-language online site providing complete news and fan discussions around Korean and Asian pop culture, in a deal valued at less than $10 million. With this acquisition, Viki expands its offering of top-tier Korean entertainment and news to its global audience of 40 million monthly users and will provide a greater space for fans to connect with one another. Soompi has doubled its reach in the past two years alone, amassing nearly 7 million users per month, and was most recently a division of Crunchyroll, the leading Anime subscription site.

“Soompi’s recent exponential growth underscores global fans’ changing tastes in popular entertainment, and we’re excited to fuel this growth even more,” said Tammy H. Nam, CEO of Viki. “Joining forces with the Soompi team enables Viki to kick-start our news and fan forum offering, starting first with Korean and with plans to expand into other vertical categories.”

In the near term, the two sites will continue to operate separately while integrating content, such as Viki videos in Soompi news posts and fan forums, and Soompi news into Viki show and celebrity pages. Soompi founder Susan Kang will oversee the Community and Publishing team at Viki, Inc. and will report directly to Nam.

“I started Soompi in 1998 as a passion project because I wanted to create a space for fans of Korean pop culture,” said Kang. “With Viki and Soompi’s shared core value of community, I feel like we’ve finally found our perfect home.”