Group Referred to Prosecution for Earning 3.7 Billion KRW by Illegally Producing "10-Minute Summaries" of Dramas and Movies on YouTube

Yangsan Police Station, Gyeongnam. [Photo by The Asia Business Daily DB]

A group running YouTube channels that posted “binge-watching” videos—summarizing dramas and movies in just 10 to 15 minutes all the way to the ending—has been caught by the police after earning a large amount of illicit profits.

On August 31, the Yangsan Police Station in Gyeongnam announced that it had referred eight individuals, including Mr. A, a man in his 30s and head of a YouTube channel operation company, as well as one corporation, to the prosecution without detention on charges of violating copyright law.

According to police, Mr. A and the others are accused of uploading content such as movies and dramas to 26 YouTube channels from 2019 through April this year without permission from the copyright holders, generating illicit gains amounting to approximately 3,745,000,000 KRW.

Mr. A had initially engaged in these illegal activities alone since 2019 but established a corporation in 2023 to expand the operations in an organized manner.

This corporation took the form of a company comprising a dedicated “scriptwriting team,” two “editing teams 1 and 2” responsible for video editing and uploading, and a “management support team” in charge of financial management.

They unlawfully edited content from seven companies—including the three major broadcast networks—reducing original works typically 60 minutes in length to videos condensed into 10 to 15 minutes, so-called “fast movies,” which they uploaded to their YouTube channels.

The operation spanned 26 YouTube channels, with the total number of subscribers—counting duplicate subscribers—reaching 1.46 million. The most viewed video produced by the group recorded up to 6.3 million views.

When channels were blocked due to copyright complaints, they continued their activities by re-uploading the videos to substitute channels.

After launching an investigation prompted by reports from content producers, the police conducted office searches and data analysis. They cross-verified corporate bank account deposit records and internal company documents, confirming illicit profits equivalent to roughly 3,745,000,000 KRW accrued from August 2024 to April this year, and they applied for a pre-trial preservation order for recovery of the illegal profits.

A police official stated, “As the video platform market, including YouTube, is growing rapidly, there is a surge in types of copyright infringement crimes where content is processed and distributed without authorization to generate illicit profits. We will maintain strict crackdowns and stern responses to systematic and habitual intellectual property violations.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.