A South Korean government official recently discussed the exceptionally high levels of webtoon piracy and lamented the great difficulty in removing this content. We summarize.
Sharp increase in cases
According to Sol Son, a member of the Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, the total number of requests for the removal of unauthorized publications of South Korean webtoons abroad has increased almost eightfold in the past four years, from 48,452 (2020) to 393,038 cases (2024). By August 2025, 302,331 cases had already been recorded in the current year, which again indicates an increase.
Despite the increased efforts of the Korea Copyright Protection Agency (KCOPA), only 8.8% of these applications are successful, meaning that 91.2% of illegal copies remain available online.
This is primarily due to the fact that the current measures lack enforcement power, as requests for deletion – for example to search engines, cloud services or web hosting providers – are not legally binding and the rights holders would have to take additional legal steps in each affected country.
Webtoons now account for around 77% of all content-related deletion requests, while the number of cases in the area of ​​video game piracy has only increased slightly and there has even been a decline in the music sector.
Government must intervene
In this context, Son also cited limited human resources and stagnant budgets as major obstacles. The department for copyright protection in the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism currently only has 28 employees, which is hardly adequate for the constantly growing number of cases.
In addition, the available budget for cooperation with Interpol to combat copyright infringement internationally in 2025 and 2026 will remain unchanged at 1.2 billion won (approximately 722,116 euros). At the same time, the special remuneration of the responsible investigators is to be significantly reduced.
In order to protect creators and preserve the industrial ecosystem, Son concluded, calling for South Korea, as a leading country in the field of webtoons, to introduce stricter copyright protection measures and allocate more staff and budget to the copyright protection department.
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Via Naver
© DUBU (REDICE STUDIO), Chugong 2018 / D&C MEDIA All rights reserved.
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