PITO, artist of the BL manhwa "Leave the Work to Me!", and author and artist of the GL manhwas "My Joy" and "Her Pet", all licensed by Lezhin, just admited to having used revenge porn of a Korean girl as art references for his manhwa. Read his statement on Naver here (archived in case he deletes it).
As Korean activist sikpang on Twitter has spoken about, PITO used a "porn video" as a reference (and meme) for his manhwa. However, that video was actually a well-known illegal recording ("molka"). The following comment was written by the real victim of the illegal recording, saying it had ruined her life. Eventually, she committed suicide, but even then, Korean men continued to mock her by referring to the leaked video as her "last work".
PITO has stated that the webtoon platform instructed him to practice drawing for an adult webtoon, and that his contract was abusive. But naturally, the company never instructed him to use this kind of material as artistic reference. Read a detailed thread by Korean feminist activist cat here.
Seri, author and artist of the GL manhwa (considered by many a feminist work) "Her Tale of Shim Chong" (Tappytoon), and adapter of the manhwa "My S-Class Hunters" (Webtoon), advocated for PITO in a now partially deleted Twitter thread, saying that 10 years ago illegal recordings ("molka") were not a crime. This is patently false, as Korean users have pointed out. The movement against online sexual harassment in Korea goes as far as 1997, and at the time legislation against sexual crimes was in place.
What seems to be worse is that anti-sex crimes activists have (allegedly) been blocked by multiple manhwa authors.
The situation around women's rights in Korea is dire. Recently, many women, including high school students, have reported that they have been victims of deepfakes (AI-generated pornography using their faces). These crimes seem to mostly take place on Telegram channels, and estimated numbers indicate that there are at least 220.000 offenders. Here is a good post explaining current events.
Previous related incidents that you might have heard of are the Nth Room case and The Burning Sun scandal.
I want to make it clear that I'm not calling for a boycott of any of the authors involved. What you do with your time and money is your personal decision. I just wanted to bring people's attention to this issue on Tumblr, since there are barely any posts about it. But in my case, I'll never be able to read these works anymore. It especially hurts in the case of "Her Tale of Shim Chong", as it was always regarded as the best historical yuri manhwa, and many readers found it to be a powerful feminist story. Personally, I won't be able to recommend it ever again.
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