kwebtoon1-7, Exercise 3: Scanlation

Model answer:

Definition: the fan-made scanning, translation and editing of comics from one language into another, done as amateur work by groups and nearly always without the copyright holder's express permission; mainly used for Japanese manga, but also for Korean manhwa and Chinese manhua.

Korean-side events (any two): in 2020 the artist Haesin Young threatened legal action against a piracy website; in 2021 Lezhin said it was working with law firms to bring charges after accusations from manhwa authors (including YD) that scanlation costs authors money and motivation; the Korean government and Interpol began a three-year cooperative investigation into distributors of pirated or illegally translated comics, cartoons and novels (year not given in the passage read).

Why one side only: the passages read give the creators' and publishers' side (lost income, legal action); they do not give the fan side or measure piracy's effect on sales. The relevant facts that remain are that official English translation began only in 2014 and that platforms now offer licensed translations and, on one, fan translation inside the system.

Sources: Wikipedia, Scanlation; Webtoon.