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When any project gets cancelled, it is mostly due to poor reception, insufficient funds, or lack of a proper platform. But getting cancelled due to plagiarism? That is certainly a blow to the creator and the project. The manga world has been shaken in the past few days owing to the recent plagiarism allegations for the long-running manga, Wind Breaker. This manga, created by Jo Yong Seok, has been running for about 12 years now. Over the years, it has cultivated a loyal fan base for itself with translations from Korean into Chinese, English, and Japanese.
What is the controversy around Wind Breaker?
Wind Breaker follows the passion of Jo “Jay” Ja-Hyun, a high school student who enters the world of competitive cycling. The controversy surrounding Wind Breaker first erupted on June 30, when fans discovered similarities between episode 176 of Wind Breaker and several panels of another popular manga, Tokyo Ghoul. Fans began sharing the panels across social media platforms and engaged in a panel-by-panel analysis to support their plagiarism claims.
The creator of Wind Breaker, Jo Yong Seok, was eventually accused of tracing art from other manga titles and art as well. As the controversy intensified and past instances of plagiarism were uncovered, those specific sections on Wind Breaker were edited silently, which further intensified the fans’ anger.
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Eventually, on July 11, Jo Yong Seok came forward with an apology and acceptance of the allegations in the final chapter of the manga. He wrote, “Among the reference materials I used during production, some scenes ended up being very similar to or nearly identical in expression to those from other works.” (translation by Korea Herald)
Wind Breaker has had 556 episodes and over 600 million views on Webtoon. Tight deadlines and burnout were cited as reasons by Jo for the plagiarism. He also admitted to using other manga and webtoons as “reference materials” for Wind Breaker, which ended up being similar or identical to the other titles. He then expressed his regret over not upholding the standards of originality in his work.
After the final chapter was released, the entire work has since been taken down from the platform.
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