SEOUL, August 28, 2026 – Kakao Entertainment has published its 9th Anti-Piracy White Paper, highlighting “Dark Chaser” – an industry-first comprehensive copyright protection system developed in-house – along with the company’s anti-piracy achievements and expertise.

Kakao Entertainment plans to leverage Dark Chaser to further advance its copyright protection framework, expanding its efforts beyond reactive takedowns of illegally distributed content to proactive measures aimed at preventing infringement. Through this enhanced system, the company is committed to strengthening the protection of creators’ rights and fostering a safer environment for creative works.

Dark Chaser is a comprehensive copyright protection system developed in-house by Kakao Entertainment based on years of accumulated anti-piracy data and technical expertise. As piracy methods continue to evolve through tactics such as domain changes and bypass access, the system integrates the entire response process — from content detection and reporting to tracking domain changes, verifying outcomes, and managing response histories — into a single platform. This enables faster, more efficient, and more accurate responses to copyright infringement.

A key feature of Dark Chaser is its ability to analyze infringement patterns and correlations between sites to detect recurring infringements and early signs of new leaks. The system puts into practice the TTT (Targeting, Tracing, Takedown) strategy introduced in Kakao Entertainment’s 7th Anti-Piracy White Paper in 2025. By connecting the identification of illegal sites (Targeting), tracking of their operators (Tracing), and site shutdowns and legal action (Takedown), Kakao Entertainment has established a more sophisticated and comprehensive response framework.

Going beyond the removal of infringing content, the company has also further advanced its proprietary watermarking technology to identify the source of initial leaks and prevent the repeated distribution of pirated content.

Launched in beta at the end of 2025, Dark Chaser has since undergone continuous enhancements. The system currently provides 24/7 global monitoring of approximately 16,000 Kakao Entertainment webtoon and web novel IPs, while integrating multilingual keyword detection, domain-change tracking, and recurring infringement pattern analysis through a centralized dashboard.

This enables Kakao Entertainment to gain a comprehensive view of the scale and recurrence of copyright infringement, identify response priorities, and take swift action in cooperation with relevant organizations and authorities in Korea and overseas.

Going forward, Kakao Entertainment plans to continuously analyze data accumulated through the operation of Dark Chaser to further enhance the system. The company will also strengthen its capabilities to prevent content leaks and expand its copyright protection information and guidance for creators and content providers (CPs).

Continued Growth in Global Anti-Piracy Efforts

Kakao Entertainment’s efforts to combat global piracy have continued to deliver significant results. During the first six months of 2026, the company blocked approximately 126.16 million instances of pirated content worldwide, representing a 24.8% increase from the approximately 101.12 million instances blocked during the second half of 2025 (July–December).

Since launching P.CoK (Protecting the Content of Kakao Entertainment), the content industry’s first dedicated anti-piracy team, in November 2021, Kakao Entertainment has removed more than 1.1 billion instances of illegal webtoon and web novel content worldwide through June 2026.

The latest white paper also features interviews with Seo Young Seok and Kim, Seung-su, Co-Chairs of the lawmakers’ caucus of comics and webtoon lovers (MANSAMO), as well as Sungchun YOON, the newly appointed president of the Korea Copyright Protection Agency (KCOPA). The interviewees emphasized the importance and necessity of strengthening efforts to combat piracy.

“The National Assembly, government, and private sector must each fulfill their respective roles and work closely together as one team to protect copyrights,” Seo said.

Kim said, “We will spare no policy support to ensure that webtoons establish themselves as a future growth engine that creates jobs and drives related industries beyond the global content industry.”

Yoon said, “Kakao Entertainment’s Anti-Piracy White Paper is an important public asset that goes beyond the achievements of an individual company by sharing infringement patterns and response experience with the industry as a whole.”

Since launching P.CoK in 2021 as the content industry’s first dedicated anti-piracy team, Kakao Entertainment has regularly published its Anti-Piracy White Paper to share its achievements and expertise with the wider industry while continuously advancing its copyright protection framework through proprietary technologies.

“Through this white paper, we are unveiling Dark Chaser for the first time and presenting a new direction for copyright protection that extends beyond takedowns to proactive prevention,” Kakao Entertainment said. “We will continue to advance our technologies and expand collaboration with relevant organizations and global partners to create a content ecosystem where creators and users can enjoy greater peace of mind.”