📰 New article from TorrentFreak
Married Couple Behind ‘Billion-Visit’ Webtoon Piracy Network Caught in Vietnam
The Billion-Visit Takedown
It turns out that running a massive webtoon piracy empire is a lot harder than just clicking “translate” and collecting donations. In a massive blow to the world of unauthorized manhwa, Vietnamese police have seized the servers of three major piracy networks: Harimanga, Manhwaclan, and Kunmanga.
The culprits? A Vietnamese couple who had been running the show since early 2023. These sites weren’t just small-time operations; they were pulling in an estimated 1.1 billion visits a year, serving up nearly 15,000 titles to readers across the globe. The financial fallout for the Korean content industry is staggering, estimated at roughly $136 million.
This wasn’t just luck—it was a coordinated manhunt. Naver Webtoon helped map the network, providing the evidence that allowed Korean and Vietnamese authorities to team up and pull the plug.
Why this matters:
- A New Era of Enforcement: South Korea recently gained “emergency blocking power,” allowing them to bypass lengthy review committees to shut down pirate sites instantly.
- Global Pressure: The U.S. has recently put Vietnam on a “Priority Foreign Country” watchlist due to weak piracy enforcement, so this high-profile bust is a major test of whether Hanoi is getting serious.
The couple faces local charges, though Korea is pushing for extradition. For now, the original sites are dark, but in the world of piracy, a new name is usually just a domain rename away.