Naver Webtoon said on the 13th that, through international cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, INTERPOL, and local law enforcement agencies in North Africa, it has permanently shut down three global English illegal webtoon and comic distribution sites and arrested their operator.
The sites shut down this time were illegal webtoon and comic distribution sites based in North Africa and run by the same operator. They mainly targeted users in the West, including the United States and Europe, and had illegally distributed content, including Korean webtoons, scanning and translating more than 300 Naver Webtoon titles without authorization.
According to data compiled by the analytics platform Similarweb, the three sites had a combined annual visit count of more than 130 million, causing significant copyright damage.
The sites also went beyond mere aggregation to serve as sources that first uploaded their own scanned and translated versions. Because the illegal copies they uploaded spread to numerous secondary piracy sites, the company said the action is highly significant in that it blocks the upstream supply chain of the illegal distribution ecosystem, beyond shutting down individual sites.
Naver Webtoon said it has been monitoring the operating structures of the sites and signs of infringement through Anti-Piracy, its dedicated response unit for illegal webtoon distribution. It detected signs that multiple existing sites were recently consolidated and rebranded into new sites to evade enforcement, and provided relevant agencies with operational leads, infringement evidence, and damage data collected. Based on this, cooperation proceeded with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, INTERPOL, and local law enforcement agencies, and all three sites are currently inaccessible.
The joint effort also led to the arrest of the site operator. The operator was arrested by local law enforcement and is undergoing judicial procedures.
Naver Webtoon said it is meaningful that its crackdown on overseas illegal distribution sites is expanding from site shutdowns to the arrest of operators and support for legal proceedings. It expects this to serve as an opportunity to broaden the basis for international cooperation against similar illegal sites going forward.
Kim Gyu-nam, head of webtoon entertainment and Naver Webtoon CRO, said, "This action is highly significant not only because it shut down large-scale illegal distribution sites, but also because it cut off the primary source that spread self-scanned and translated versions and led to the arrest of the operator," adding, "Illegal webtoon sites infringe creators' legitimate revenue and hinder the growth of the global webtoon ecosystem, so we will continue to strengthen cooperation with investigative and related agencies in each country to protect creators' rights and the value of their works."