U.S. visit committee issues warning to legal broadcaster for denying forced mobilization of comfort women

‘Beware’ of Lotte OneTV product sales broadcast that exaggerates height growth effect

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Yoo Hyeon-min = A legal sanction, a ‘warning’, was passed on a legal broadcast that broadcast without filtering remarks denying the forced mobilization of Japanese military comfort women victims.

The Broadcasting Media and Communications Standards Commission held a meeting at the Broadcasting Center in Mok-dong, Seoul on the 19th and announced that it decided to issue a warning to the legal broadcast 'Hong Seung-gi Asks, He Answers' by majority opinion.

The program invited Professor Ryu Seok-chun to discuss topics such as laws related to comfort women victims, and broadcast remarks to the effect that "there was not a single person who was forcibly taken away" and "what the Chungdaehyup Association has said so far is a complete lie."

The U.S. Visit Committee judged that the broadcast's objectivity was seriously violated, as the contestant completely denied and distorted the results of the international community's investigation, numerous academic studies, and judicial decisions, and the host did not confirm the objective facts or present an appropriate counterargument. The degree of violation of the prohibition against defamation was also considered serious.

However, some members expressed the opinion of 'no problem' that it would be difficult to subject scholars' views to sanctions, saying that there was a need to guarantee the diversity of minority opinions.

At the meeting on this day, a 'caution', a legal sanction, was decided on Lotte OneTV's sales broadcast of the health functional food 'Kyclao HT042 Prime', which exaggerated the effect of height growth and portrayed short stature negatively.

The broadcast explained that although the average height difference between the two groups was smaller after 24 weeks than after 12 weeks in the human application test, the growth gap widened as the period of intake increased.

They also portrayed physical differences negatively with comments such as 'I really wish my child wasn't as small as me' and 'I hope my children don't become resentful of me later on.'