9 advertisements misrepresent Chinese kimchi as domestic product, expression of imminent sell-out, 'caution' for home shopping too

The Broadcasting Media and Communications Standards Commission (Korea Communications Standards Commission) decided to impose legal sanctions on Far East Broadcasting, which unilaterally conveyed Chairman Kim Jang-hwan's personal claims regarding the 'suspicion of lobbying for the life of former division chief Seong-geun Lim'.

On the 7th, the US Visit Committee held a plenary meeting at the Mok-dong Broadcasting Hall in Seoul and announced that the majority opinion decided to issue a warning regarding the 'Far East Broadcasting Official Position', which was organized as a special broadcast by FEBC (Far East Broadcasting)-Standard FM.

In relation to the special prosecutor's search and seizure, the broadcast aired claims by Chairman Kim for about three minutes, such as "Far East Broadcasting conducted an unreasonable search and seizure even though it had no connection whatsoever," and "No evidence or charges were found at all."

The U.S. Visit Committee pointed out that unilaterally conveying only the claims of direct stakeholders could be criticized as using the public position of broadcasting for personal gain.

Some committee members expressed the opinion of ‘not applicable’, saying that it could be viewed as a right of reply to respond to an unprecedented situation from the broadcasting company’s perspective.

The U.S. Visit Committee also decided to place a 'caution', a legal sanction, on nine broadcast advertisements that misled Chinese kimchi into being domestically produced.

It was determined that the advertisements indicated the country of origin of Chinese kimchi in small subtitles, but used expressions such as “delivered directly from Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do” and “sent from Paju” to mislead people into thinking that the delivery address was the place of production.

Hyundai Home Shopping's 'Borotalco Body Cream' sales broadcast was also assessed as 'caution' as it was judged to have encouraged impulse purchases by making it appear as if sold out was imminent even though the actual product was not sold out.