'Korean Public Service Ads Airing on Overseas Adult YouTube Channels'... Kim Young-joo: "KOBACO Wastes Hundreds of Millions in Budget"

Among 1.51 Million YouTube Channels Airing Public Service Announcements, 206,000 Channels Do Not Match PSAs
Including Adult Product Sales, Japanese Adult Videos, Spanish Adult Broadcasts, and Other Explicit Channels

[Asia Economy Reporter Naju-seok] It has been confirmed that the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation (KOBACO) has aired public service advertisements on provocative overseas YouTube channels. Public service ads promoting school zones, multicultural awareness improvement, and more were broadcast on adult video content.

According to the analysis data of the "Recent 5 Years (2017.1~2018.8) YouTube Public Service Advertisement Status" released by Kim Young-joo, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, on the 23rd, KOBACO aired 250 million public service ads through approximately 1.51 million YouTube channels over the past five years. Among these, about 206,000 overseas YouTube channels that were completely inconsistent with the original purpose of the public service ads were included.

KOBACO invested a budget of 1.399 billion KRW over the past five years to broadcast public service ads on YouTube. Although public service ads should only be aired on domestic YouTube channels, about 31 million KRW of the budget was wasted as ads were randomly broadcast on overseas YouTube channels.

Kim’s office explained, "KOBACO claimed that public service ads were only broadcast when a person located in Korea watched overseas YouTube channels, but they could not even identify whether the viewers of overseas YouTube were domestic or foreign."

In particular, among the YouTube channels where KOBACO aired public service ads were provocative channels such as adult product sales, Japanese adult videos, and Spanish adult broadcasts. On these channels, public service ads promoting school zones, multicultural awareness improvement, presidential election promotion, and COVID-19 prevention were broadcast.

Moreover, the Korea Press Foundation instructed that "advertisements should not be exposed to problematic videos such as false, manipulated, or provocative videos, and continuous monitoring should be conducted" regarding this project, but these measures were not implemented. Furthermore, KOBACO, which did not even realize that public service ads were being aired on provocative overseas YouTube channels, awarded internal and government commendations to the public service advertisement team employees responsible for this project over the past five years.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Rep. Kim said, "It is regrettable that the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation did not even know that public service ads were being broadcast on provocative overseas YouTube channels," adding, "It is a serious problem that billions of won in budget are wasted on provocative overseas YouTube channels while our country's public service ads are being aired there. The government urgently needs to prepare countermeasures."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.