In July 31, the Seoul center district court judged. “Taekwon V is clearly different from Mazinger Z in appearance.” “Taekwon V is an independent creation distinguished from Mazinger Z or the secondary creation that amended this.”
The court said, “Taekwon V is made from the taekwondo that is the Korean national sports, and it is different from Mazinger that is made based on Japanese culture. Their characteristics and the personalities are different from each other.”
“Robot Taekwon V” was produced as an animated movie in Korea in 1976 and it has been continually suspected more than 40 years that it was plagiarism of “Mazinger Z”" televised in Japan 4 years earlier.
Kim Cheong-gi, the supervisor of “Robot Taekwon V” once admitted that he had been affected by Mazinger.

That is worthy of the Korean court. By the way, the taekwondo assumes Shotokan karate of Japan the origin. (wikipedia)
It is revealed that the title in the planning stage was “Mazinger Taekwon”. Koreans estimate “Taekwon V” as “the first point of Korean robot animated cartoon”.
At the same time, they think it is “the past symbol that you should reflect on at the point called the plagiarism of the Japanese animated cartoon”. So Taekwon V is a work that brings a complicated state of mind to Korean.
The supervisor Kim said, “I got hints from Japanese animated cartoons and I struggled with thinking how I could make my animated cartoon that did not resemble the original. The impression of the Japanese animated cartoons is too strong, and it was a fact that I made some designs resembling them in this way, no matter how many efforts I made. I realized the limitations of my power.” He admitted copying Japanese animations, but denied the plagiarism. He said that it was not an intention. But the concrete grounds were not shown.
The court says that there is the copyright for secondary creation too. and it says “Taekwon V is an independent creation distinguished from Mazinger Z or the secondary creation that amended this.” It does not deny the plagiarism of the Japanese works. Taekon V is the Korean national animation equal to Japanese “Astro Boy” or “Space Blazer”. After all it is hard for Korean court to accept that Taekon V is the plagiarism, because of Korean national sentiment and the nationalism. The court says only the superficial arguments and keeps up Korean pride. (wikipedia Japanese Version)
Koreans give priority to the emotion than the logic or law. The judgments are carried out by feelings and emotions than law. It is said, “there is the unwritten law called ‘Korean emotion law’ that is more dominant than the constitution in Korea”. And Korea does not have the independence of the judicial power and the trials are changed by Korean public opinion.