Korean book importer charged with 'epic scale' piracy
Friday, March 16 2001
Published on AllBusiness.com
Park Tae-Geun, the owner of Shin Han, one of the leading book importers in Korea, has been arrested and charged with book piracy on an epic scale.
The police raided the Seoul warehouse of his publishing company, Han Shin, on 26th February, and found about 600,000 copies of 2,000 different titles. The vast majority of the haul, estimated by the Association of American Publishers to be worth $14.5m (£10m), are thought to be pirated. Many are believed to have been recently printed and were being sold to students at full price.
The raid was the result of a tip-off to a US publisher, which alerted the AAP. Susan Pai, the AAP's deputy director for international trade relations, flew to Korea to lodge a complaint with the state prosecutor and supervise the investigation.
Han Shin was well known as a leading "reprinter" of similar foreign copyright titles in the days before such works were protected by Korean law, but had successfully launched a leading import business, Shin Han, after Korea signed the Berne Convention on copyright in 1987.
The company specialises in humanities. Most of the seized titles are reprints of books by British publishers, including Penguin, OUP, CUP and Routledge. Nearly all were published in the 1980s or earlier, and they are mainly literature, literary criticism and linguistics titles.
The number of titles and the quantity of books involved suggest that there is a market in Korea for further education humanities backlist titles about which the publishers had been previously unaware. Kang Hee-Il, director of the Korean Publishers Association, said: "We deeply apologise to the foreign publishers, and we will take the opportunity to act to prevent this kind of problem occurring again."
Ms Pai said: "I am shocked at the level of greed shown by Han Shin. Not only was this company stealing from foreign copyright owners, but it committed a fraud against its own country. Korean students have been paying the full imported book retail price for Han Shin's cheaply made counterfeits."
Such is the scale of the alleged offence that the prosecution may call for the maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment. Whatever the outcome, the case has rocked the Korean book trade to the core.
The police raided the Seoul warehouse of his publishing company, Han Shin, on 26th February, and found about 600,000 copies of 2,000 different titles. The vast majority of the haul, estimated by the Association of American Publishers to be worth $14.5m (£10m), are thought to be pirated. Many are believed to have been recently printed and were being sold to students at full price.
The raid was the result of a tip-off to a US publisher, which alerted the AAP. Susan Pai, the AAP's deputy director for international trade relations, flew to Korea to lodge a complaint with the state prosecutor and supervise the investigation.
Han Shin was well known as a leading "reprinter" of similar foreign copyright titles in the days before such works were protected by Korean law, but had successfully launched a leading import business, Shin Han, after Korea signed the Berne Convention on copyright in 1987.
The company specialises in humanities. Most of the seized titles are reprints of books by British publishers, including Penguin, OUP, CUP and Routledge. Nearly all were published in the 1980s or earlier, and they are mainly literature, literary criticism and linguistics titles.
The number of titles and the quantity of books involved suggest that there is a market in Korea for further education humanities backlist titles about which the publishers had been previously unaware. Kang Hee-Il, director of the Korean Publishers Association, said: "We deeply apologise to the foreign publishers, and we will take the opportunity to act to prevent this kind of problem occurring again."
Ms Pai said: "I am shocked at the level of greed shown by Han Shin. Not only was this company stealing from foreign copyright owners, but it committed a fraud against its own country. Korean students have been paying the full imported book retail price for Han Shin's cheaply made counterfeits."
Such is the scale of the alleged offence that the prosecution may call for the maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment. Whatever the outcome, the case has rocked the Korean book trade to the core.
