The Korea Press Foundation Accused of 'Manipulating Government Advertising Metrics,' Case Assigned to Central District Prosecutors' Office Criminal Division

The Korea Press Foundation (KPF) is under investigation by the prosecution over allegations of manipulating government advertising index rankings.

Photo by Jinhyung Kang, Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, Seocho-gu, Seoul.

According to the legal community on the 5th, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office assigned the case on the 3rd to the 9th Criminal Division (Chief Prosecutor Kim Hyun-ah). The case involves the 'New National University Student Representatives Council' (Shinjeon Daehyeop) filing a complaint against Park Wan-su, Vice Chairman of the KPF, and Kim, former head of the Media Research Center, on charges including obstruction of official duties by deception and obstruction of business by deception.

On the 27th of last month, an online media outlet raised suspicions that the KPF manipulated the ranking of media advertising rates by changing the method of readership surveys. The readership survey asks, "Which paper newspapers have you read in the past week?" and is used to determine advertising rates for media companies.

Shinjeon Daehyeop claims that the KPF changed the scoring method in 2021 from assigning scores based on the original rankings to dividing responses into five segments regardless of rank and assigning the same score to responses within the same segment, which resulted in the reversal of rankings for certain newspapers.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism requested a report on the circumstances from the KPF regarding these allegations. Consequently, the KPF has initiated an internal special audit.

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