[HanCinema's News] Piracy of South Korean Content on the Rise

According to a new report from the Bank of Korea, over the last five years there has been a jump of 188.4% in the illegal distribution of South Korean content such as webtoons, videos, and music. To be more precise, the Korea Copyright Protection Agency reported 193,013 instances in 2019 where they file a takedown notice for illegally distributed content overseas. As of August of this year, that number is now up to 556,590 instances, and will likely exceed 800,000 by the end of the year.

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Overseas notices are distinct from domestic ones. It was only in 2022 that overseas notices exceeded domestic notices for the first time, possibly because South Korean content had become that much more popular overseas. However, it is also possible that the KCPA simply did not extend as much energy issuing overseas notices prior to that year. Distribution is also a factor. "Queen of Tears" has provoked 4,439 overseas notices compared to only 57 domestically.

The wide disparity is almost certainly due to the fact that "Queen of Tears" does not have a distributor in China, as Netflix owns the international streaming rights to the drama but does not do business in China. The television drama "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" has a similar issue, with 7055 takedown notices overseas vastly exceeding the domestic ones. The American streaming site KOCOWA has claimed such piracy has cost then tens of millions of dollars in damages.

When other territories are included, the number is almost certainly even more than that. As of 2024, only 20 staffpersons with the KCPA focus on international copyright infringement, compared to 195 for domestic copyright infringement. International copyright infringement also has a budget of only 4.6 million dollars, compared to 10 million dollars for international copyright infringement. Local politicians have called for more policing of such infringements in response to this report.

Written by William Schwartz