Recently, the group's single "Swim" was discovered for sale on Temu, while this product is only distributed through official channels such as Weverse Shop.
The incident caused the issue of counterfeit goods and unlicensed goods related to BTS to be once again noticed.
Previously, many products using BTS's name, image and brand without permission had appeared on the market. In 2023, tens of thousands of products including clothes, accessories, photo cards... were found to have signs of illegal use of the group's brand.
By March of this year, when BTS returned with the "Arirang" project, many products related to the group continued to be advertised for sale on Chinese e-commerce platforms. Some items used BTS members' images, while copying logos and designs associated with "Arirang".
Not stopping at using images, BTS's official publications have also been copied for resale. Some subjects scan content from photo books, albums and then package them into unlicensed product sets. HYBE's identification marks are also copied in some cases to make fake goods look like genuine products.
This situation does not only happen to BTS. Seventeen, Tomorrow X Together, NewJeans and many other K-pop artists have also been illegally using images to produce and trade goods. In addition, many songs by Korean artists have also been copied and used without permission.
Other Korean entertainment products also face a similar problem. Some TV shows such as "Youn's Kitchen", "Show Me the Money" and "Hyori's Bed & Breakfast" have been formatted copies. Famous movies such as "Squid Game", "The Glory" and "Extraordinary Attorney Woo" have also been leaked on unlicensed websites.
Copying and trading illegal content can affect the revenue of artists, management companies and production units, and also affect the brand value of works. As K-pop's activities expand in many markets, protecting intellectual property rights has become an issue of concern for Korean entertainment companies.
Professor Seo Kyung Duk believes that the use of other people's content for illegal business needs to be stopped. The case related to "Swim" continues to attract attention to controlling the purchase and sale of goods related to artists on online platforms.
