August 15, 2025
SEOUL – The South Korean iteration of “Baby Shark” cannot be considered to have violated the copyright law, the Supreme Court confirmed on Thursday, as it upheld an earlier court ruling against the US plaintiff’s claim that accused the popular song of being plagiarized.
The country’s top court confirmed the earlier ruling in the legal proceedings launched by New York-based composer Johnny Wright — known as Johnny Only — in 2015. He claimed that the globally famous song produced by the education company Pinkfong (previously named SmartStudy) had plagiarized his 2011 version of the popular children’s song.
The underlying song and the characters are believed to be in the public domain, according to the New York Times, since the song has been popular among children for decades.
“In case of a new song based on a preexisting one, one needs to add sufficient revision for it to be socially accepted as a new work, in order for it to be protected as a copyrighted material. … Minor changes added to the original material cannot be considered an original creative work, and thus cannot be protected by the copyright law,” the court said in its ruling.
Both the works of Wright and Pinkfong Company are based on the well-known children’s song, which had been arranged into different versions multiple times before. The versions of the songs can be traced back to the 20th century, often used at children’s summer camps and kindergartens in the form of a sing-along.
Wright released his version of the song, targeting toddlers by removing elements that could be interpreted as violent. He claimed that the Korean company’s version is directly derivative of his version, but Pinkfong Company claimed that its version was an arrangement of the original song.
Pinkfong Company’s version of “Baby Shark” has become a global hit via YouTube since its 2016 release. It became the first YouTube video to achieve 10 billion views, and is currently the most-watched video on the platform with over 16 billion views.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
