"After the emergency blocking of illegal sites such as 'Newtoki' on the 11th shut them down, subscriber numbers at webtoon platforms including Naver Webtoon and Kakao have jumped significantly. We believe blocking illegal sites is having a positive effect on the legitimate market."
Culture, Sports and Tourism Minister Choi Hwi-young made the remarks Tuesday at the third meeting of the webtoon subcommittee of the Culture and Arts Policy Advisory Committee, held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art's Seoul branch. He did not, however, cite specific revenue figures from the platforms.
"Even so, the regulatory net is so wide-meshed that illegal sites continue to operate by running away, and they are using new IT technologies for copyright infringement crimes, making them difficult to track," Choi said. "But we will not let illegality go unaddressed once we are aware of it. We will hunt them down to the end."
The emergency blocking system, which gives the Culture Minister authority over illegal distribution sites, was established through a February revision of the Copyright Act and took effect on the 11th. Tuesday's meeting was attended by Kim Shin, chairman of the Webtoon Association; Shin Il-suk, former chairwoman of the Korea Cartoonists Association; cartoonists Cho Kwang-jin and Won Soo-yeon; Choi Won-young, CEO of D&C Media; and Kim Byung-soo, chairman of the Federation of Regional Cartoon and Webtoon Associations, who discussed pending issues in the webtoon industry.
In a related meeting of copyright protection experts and industry officials chaired by Minister Choi on the 26th, concerns were raised that "despite internet service providers (ISPs) blocking copyright infringement sites under the emergency blocking measures, situations are emerging in which the blocks are being circumvented in various ways."
Such methods include automatic redirection from a blocked site to an alternative site, automatic connection to a Telegram chat room that then provides the address of an alternative site, and routing through a content delivery network (CDN) service page that automatically redirects to an illegal site.
The third webtoon subcommittee meeting on the 28th also discussed expanding support for the overseas expansion of webtoons and strengthening support for creators. "We will significantly increase next year's budget to support the overseas expansion of Korean webtoons," Choi said. "We will also prepare support measures for cartoonists facing difficulties as artificial intelligence (AI) is actively being used in webtoon production."
