Naver Webtoon said on Wednesday it shut down three global English-language illegal webtoon and comics distribution sites and arrested their operators through international cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Interpol and local law enforcement agencies in North Africa.

The sites that were shut down were illegal distribution platforms based in North Africa and run by the same operator. They distributed South Korean webtoon content to users in Western countries such as the United States and Europe and provided unauthorized scans and translations of about 300 Naver Webtoon works.

According to figures compiled by data analytics platform Similarweb, the three sites had more than 130 million combined visits a year. They also had more than 20 million visits over the past three months.

The sites served as primary sources that first uploaded their own scanned and translated versions, in a structure that allowed illegal copies to spread to many pirate sites.

Naver Webtoon said it detected signs of efforts to evade enforcement through its anti-piracy task force and collected evidence that it provided to investigative authorities. Local law enforcement agencies then arrested the operator, and judicial proceedings are under way.

Naver Webtoon said it also shut down three illegal distribution sites in May through cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security, which had more than 1.1 billion annual visits.

Naver Webtoon said it plans to continue cooperating with local investigative authorities while strengthening monitoring to prevent distribution through circumvention. It also plans to upgrade technology to identify leakers and block leaks in advance by using ToonRader, its technology to block illegal webtoon distribution.

Kyu-nam Kim (김규남), chief risk officer of Webtoon Entertainment and Naver Webtoon, said, "This measure is significant in that it did not stop at shutting down large-scale illegal distribution sites, but also blocked primary sources that were spreading scanned and translated versions and even led to the arrest of the operator." He added, "We will continue to strengthen cooperation with investigative authorities and related institutions in each country to protect creators' rights and the value of their works."