Who wrote Solo Leveling?

Solo Leveling, in Korean Na Honjaman Rebereop and in early English editions Only I Level Up, was written by Chugong, the pen name of a South Korean author who lets the work carry the public profile. The novel debuted on KakaoPage, Kakao's digital fiction and comics platform, on July 25, 2016, and ran to 270 chapters before ending on March 13, 2018. KakaoPage reported some 2.4 million readers for it, a platform-scale hit before any adaptation existed.

The premise is a single sentence with a hook in it. Ten years after gates to monster-filled dungeons opened on Earth, awakened hunters are stuck at the rank they are born with, except Sung Jinwoo, an E-rank hunter so weak he is called the weakest weapon of mankind. A hidden double dungeon nearly kills him and instead leaves him the only person alive who can level up, guided by a game-like System only he can see.

Print followed the serialization almost immediately. D&C Media began publishing the novel under its Papyrus fantasy label on November 4, 2016, while chapters were still running, and the collected edition closed on April 18, 2018. That speed, a book on shelves four months after a web debut, was the first sign the novel was not an ordinary platform serial.