The market for pirated Korean movies is growing fast. There are cases where the pirated copies appear on the internet the moment they are released in theaters. There is nothing keeping the Korean film market from the same disaster that hit Hollywood unless there are fundamental measures taken soon. The shadows of disaster are already covering our film industry if you consider that last year the loss from piracy was as much as half the money spent on production.
Korean movies are most popular among the "information technology (IT) generation." Armed with digital technology, they are active netizens who handle the internet like a toy. The seriousness of the problem is that it is these people who are doing the pirating. The loss from their piracy is bad enough but they never go to theaters either, and the resulting structural shrinkage of the market could be fatal.
Much about the situation faced by the Korean film market today is because of, in the words of one producer, the "bright and dark side of being a country strong in IT." The stronger the light the more intense the shade, and so it is only natural that the film producers association and an industry group have started working on plans to do something about it, having recently announced that "if something isn't done immediately the situation will be uncorrectable." One proposal would be the establishment of a copyright trust organization that collects copyright earnings from "video rooms" and reports acts of piracy to the authorities.
The "analog-style measures" of exposing the activity and punishment cannot keep up with the new cultural phenomena of the digital age. That is why there are demands for measures that have "digital sensibilities" such as allowing people to download films after paying a set amount.
The Hankyoreh, 8 June 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
Korean Film Must Find Online Profit Model |
