Korean Gov’t Official: Webtoon Piracy Cases Surge Eightfold in 4 Years, but 91% of Takedown Requests Fail – News

Unauthorized claims for unauthorized South Korean online communications have increased nearly eight times from 48,452 cases in 2020 to 393,038 in 2024, according to Rep. Sol Sol Sol Sol of the National Assembly Committee on Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Despite surges in execution efforts by the Korea Copyright Protection Agency (KCOPA), only 8.8% of Webtoon piracy requests succeeded last year, but 8,300 cases still sold more than 91%.

As of August 2025, the Webtoon category now accounts for 77% of all revocation requests related to Korean content, driven by the global visibility of the web to and increasingly complex piracy technologies. By contrast, during the same period, video content deletion requests increased by only 2.4 times, while music-related cases decreased.

The Representative’s son noted that the current measures lacked enforcement powers because the requirement was not legally binding and relied on the copyright owner to take other legal steps in each host country.

The report also considers limited manpower and stagnant budgets to be major obstacles. The Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Copyright Protection Division currently employs only 28 employees, which the report says is not enough to handle fast-growing cases. The Interpol cooperation budget for international copyright enforcement is still frozen by 1.2 billion krw (approximately $870,000) in 2025 and 2026.

This means the total number of law enforcement budgets in 2026 has dropped from 54.88 million krw to 53.28 million krw, raising concerns that the on-site law enforcement capacity may further weaken.

Legislators and industry experts call for stronger international cooperation and binding legal frameworks to protect South Korea’s cyber-table industry, which is now a leading cultural export but is increasingly vulnerable to global piracy.

source: News 1 (Jung-Hwan Park)