The KCC Decides Unanimously That "Infinity Challenge" Should Get a Penalty

In mid-September, the popular weekend variety program “Infinity Challenge” had gotten a legal warning from the Korea Broadcasting and Communications Review Committee (KCC). According to the KCC, “Infinity Challenge” would have broken several rules by exposing viewers to rude behavior and indirect advertising of certain brands.

On September 29, members and officials of the KCC gathered for an official meeting. Eight officials decided unanimously that the program should get a penalty for breaking the following rules: Article 27 (maintaining dignity), Article 36 (depiction of violence), Article 44 (level of acceptance), Article 51 (broadcast language) and the program also got penalty points for indirectly advertising the brand “Nike”, without mentioning its sponsorship (Article 46).

According to the vice-president (Kwon Hyuk Bu) of the committee, “These measures were highly needed, or else the program could have gotten much worse in the future. We especially reviewed the behavior of all the members of the program and their behavior was just unacceptable. For instance, the ‘butt-slapping’ game, this game is played by little children. The fact that grown men are displaying these kinds of behavior on national television brings the level of the whole program down.”

Vice-president Kwon continued about the “Nike” advertising and stated, “I called two media representatives and asked whether they knew about the fact that ‘Infinity Challenge’ has indirectly advertised the ‘Nike’ brand five times on the air. They answered they did not know anything about this.” He continued, “This would be unacceptable in foreign countries like Japan, France and Germany.”

The complaints were based on the episodes of July 2, July 9, July 23 and July 30. These episodes appeared to contain loud yelling, indirect advertising and vulgar subtitles like “die x6”.

These penalty points will be deducted from the total amount of points that the broadcasters have. It is considered as a lighter penalty form and will not have any influence on the airing and other production and distribution activities of the program.