Korea – The US has removed South Korea from its target list of countries failing to protect producers of music, movies, software and other copyrighted material from piracy, according to The Korea Times. This is the first time Korea has been lifted from the Priority Watch List since the first report in 1989, the US Trade Representative (USTR) said, although cautioning that the country must improve its control of illegal content on the internet. The current list consists of 12 countries, which includes China, Russia, India and Thailand. Algeria, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan and Venezuela were also included on the watch list. The USTR said on its website that Korea is being removed from the Watch List in recognition of the significant improvements it has made during the past year, and the Korean government’s policy direction of continuing to place a priority on improving its IPR regime. The Lee Myung-bak government has been strengthening its measures to suppress the distribution of pirated content. The measures include combining the country’s copyright protection law and computer programming law for stronger intellectual property enforcement, and strengthening monitoring on the web. Taiwan was another Asian country that was removed from the list. The USTR renews the list by the end of April each year.