KNOCKOFF GOODS ILLEGALLY SOLD OVERSEAS

[Anchor Lead]

Pororo or BTS is Korea's widely-recognized cultural icon. As such, related merchandises are strictly copyrighted. But it's been reported that knockoff goods are blatantly being sold overseas, especially on Southeast Asian online shopping malls. Here's a look at why such flagrant copyright violations are taking place despite oversight measures and crackdowns.

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At this BTS concert, light sticks of all colors fill up the audience. Roughly 1.7 million of the light sticks, a must-have item for BTS fans, have been sold in the past four years worldwide, generating some 66 billion won in revenue. The BTS light sticks can easily be spotted on foreign online shopping sites as well. They look very much like the official merchandise but they are actually knockoffs.

[Soundbite] Yu Seung-hee(IP strategy, HYBE) : "We hire an outside company to take down about 7,000 forged goods every month from overseas platforms."

Products featuring Korea's popular characters face similiar problems. Pororo's trademark is pirated to sell unlicensed character dolls and Tayo toy cars are being sold under slightly different names. As more and more Southeast Asian online shopping sites are found selling these illegal copies, the Korea Intellectual Property Protection Agency started cracking down on the counterfeits two years ago and has caught more than 410,000 infringement cases so far.

[Soundbite] (Intellectual Property Protection Agency official (VOICE MODIFIED)) : "The focus is on China but knockoffs are likely to be sold more in Southeast Asia in the future."

But when illegal, unlicensed products are found and asked to be removed, the decision to pull the merchandise off the market is left to the website itself if the seller refuses. In 2021 alone, online shopping sites have refused to block sales in nearly 50,000 IP infringement cases.

[Soundbite] Shin Yeong-dae(Trade, SMEs & startups committee, Nat'l Assembly) : "Illegal distribution of counterfeits cannot be stopped only with reactive blocking. We need strong regulatory measures such as cooperation with Interpol."

The government used three billion won in budget to monitor pirated goods this year. But the budget has been slashed to 1.2 billion won in 2023. The Korean Intellectual Property Office plans to use artificial intelligence to make up for the lapses in crackdown efforts.