Yongseok Jo's Webtoon Series Wind Breaker Halted Amid Tracing Controversy
Naver WEBTOON announced on Friday it has officially suspended the long-running sports webtoon series Wind Breaker (not to be confused with Satoru Nii's manga of the same name) following allegations of tracing — using near-identical reproductions of images from other works.On July 11, creator Yongseok Jo acknowledged the issue at the end of episode 177, titled Remains of Sincerity. "Some of the reference materials I used resulted in scenes that were nearly identical to those from other works," he wrote. "This is clearly my fault."Jo cited years of weekly deadlines as a reason for compromising creative standards and expressed deep regret to readers. While the series will no longer continue, the creator shared highlights of the intended ending and accompanying commentary on his personal blog.Naver WEBTOON also confirmed the similarity between Wind Breaker and other works in terms of composition and direction, stating that it had decided to end both serialization and service of the title.Debuting in 2013, Wind Breaker followed a high school student's journey into competitive cycling and became one of Naver WEBTOON's longest-running and most popular series, with translations in English, Japanese, and Chinese.The incident adds to a growing list of plagiarism and tracing controversies in the webtoon industry. In 2023, Naver WEBTOON pledged to strengthen monitoring systems and develop detection technologies, but the issue continues to resurface.The English version of Wind Breaker is available on WEBTOON.Source: YNA (Kyung-yoon Kim)
