The Korean publishers are sensationally bad at reaching external audiences. They have themselves to blame for leaving a vast market opportunity practically unta

The Korean publishers are sensationally bad at reaching external audiences. They have themselves to blame for leaving a vast market opportunity practically untapped. My experience of the Naver and similar apps is that their tardy, mediocre, abandoned, or outright nonexistent official translations are eclipsed by the timely and often very good fan/pirate scanlations, the readers they provide range from janky to abysmal, their content delivery is globally unreliable, discovery is a joke, and licensing a digital asset in the original Korean is almost impossible for the average international user due to insularity of their commerce and delivery systems. Several times I’ve licensed content via the Naver app, in order to support the manhwaga, but then read it via a scanlation service because the user experience and translation is so much better. The pirates often have better recommendations, too. When customers have no channel available for purchase whatsoever, or the channel is painfully sub-standard, or creates insurmountable barriers, it’s hardly surprising that enterprising buccaneers fill the gap. A classic case of “piracy is a service problem”, and throwing the DMCA around isn’t going to make them any more money.