The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korean National Police Agency said on the 13th that, through international joint investigations with the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and others, they shut down three sites that had been illegally distributing domestic webtoons and web novels on a large scale in North Africa and arrested one operator.
The sites shut down this time are three in total: an illegal webtoon distribution site A, an illegal web novel distribution site B, and site C, which had illegally shared works in connection with the two sites. On these sites, which began operating in Jul. 2024, a total of 83,688 pieces of content were copied and distributed without authorization, including 30,926 of the latest popular domestic webtoons such as "Severe Trauma Center" and 5,202 web novels.
About 57% of the content they copied and distributed without authorization was Korean content. The industry estimated annual damages at about 20 billion won. Considering that the content they illegally scanned, translated into English, and distributed was secondarily and tertiarily re-uploaded through other sites, the scale of damage is likely larger.
The arrest was achieved through cooperation between the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) special judicial police for copyright, the Korean National Police Agency's International Affairs Bureau, Interpol's I-SOP project, and the private sector including Naver Webtoon.
On Mar., based on Naver Webtoon's in-house infringement response analysis tip, a full-fledged international joint investigation began. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) activated the Interpol I-SOP international cooperation investigation channel, and, after working in tandem with local police through a police attaché at the Korean embassy in North Africa, the effort led to the shutdown of the illegal sites and the arrest of the operator.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) plans to continue working with local investigative authorities to ensure local judicial procedures for the suspect proceed smoothly, while also pursuing international cooperation against copyright infringement crimes occurring in neighboring countries.
Park Jun-seong, head of the Korean National Police Agency's International Affairs Bureau, said, "We will further expand international cooperation to respond to the illegal distribution of 'K-content' and actively cooperate with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST)."