SEOUL, June 23 (AJP) - South Korea will launch a permanent law enforcement division on June 30 specifically designed to investigate international copyright infringement and protect its rapidly growing digital export economy.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Tuesday that a cabinet-approved decree officially upgrades its existing anti-piracy task force into the permanent Copyright Special Judicial Police Division, reinforced by eight newly assigned investigators.
The overhaul is intended to shield South Korea's flagship cultural exports, which have experienced massive global financial growth over the last five years but face systemic threats from sophisticated online piracy networks.
According to market tracking data from the state-backed Korea Creative Content Agency, the global market size for South Korean digital web cartoons, known as webtoons, more than tripled from roughly $3.5 billion in 2020 to an estimated $11.8 billion in early 2026, expanding at an average annual growth rate of nearly 30 percent.
The television and drama sector has followed a similar trajectory, expanding into an $11.5 billion global industry over the same five-year period as international streaming hours for South Korean series surged by more than 35 percent, according to figures published by global media trackers.
Because overseas criminal syndicates siphon hundreds of millions of dollars from these creative sectors by operating proxy servers outside South Korean jurisdiction, the government is moving to permanently institutionalize its cross-border tracking and asset confiscation mandates.
The culture ministry first granted its officials special policing powers for copyright enforcement in 2008 before grouping them into a scientific crime unit in October 2023. Operating under formal intelligence-sharing pacts with the National Police Agency and Interpol, the investigators previously dismantled Noonoo TV, the country's largest illegal streaming site, and arrested illicit broadcast operators running localized syndicates in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Demonstrating the unit's expanding reach, investigators secured the physical extradition of a naturalized Japanese citizen who operated a massive illegal manga-sharing platform earlier this month. The suspect was repatriated from Tokyo to South Korea on June 11 following extensive diplomatic and forensic coordination between South Korean authorities and Japanese law enforcement.
Under the expanded structure, the dedicated division will focus on identifying the complete financial and technical architectures of international piracy rings to trace, freeze, and claw back criminal profits. Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Choi Hwi-young noted that the previous administrative setup severely compromised operational efficiency, as staff were forced to manage general copyright promotion policy and active criminal pursuits simultaneously.
"With this strengthened copyright protection organization, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will track down infringers to the very end to eradicate the copyright violations that pose a major obstacle to the development of South Korea's core cultural industry," Choi said.
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