Thousands of Korean brands continue to be registered illegally in China every year, according to data from the Korean Intellectual Property Office. 

According to Democratic Party Rep. Park Young-soon's office which publicized the data on Wednesday, two-thousand-922 Korean brands were illegally registered for trademark in China last year. 

The number of such cases has been climbing steadily, with 977 instances recorded in 2017, one-thousand-666 in 2018, one-thousand-486 in 2019 and three-thousand-457 in 2020. There were one-thousand-436 such cases in the first half of this year alone.

Almost two-thirds of all intellectual property disputes worldwide involving Korean firms occur in China, of which 65 percent concern brand infringement.

Park bemoaned the lack of institutionalized support from the government, noting that last year, Seoul only intervened in 65 illegal brand registration cases.