MBC Hit With Legal Sanctions After Star MC Swears On Live Broadcast
The Korea Communications Standards Commission (KOCSC) has issued sanctions against the MBC Radio show Two O’Clok Date With Ahn Young Mi after the host used profanities while on-air.
On March 31, KST, KOCSC held a plenary session and imposed a formal “Warning,” a statutory penalty under Article 51 of the Broadcasting Deliberation Regulations. A “Waning” is a serious measure among all the KOCSC sanctions, and it can negatively impact a broadcaster’s license renewal process.
The controversy that prompted this stern response began on October 29, 2024, during a live on-air interview with THE BOYZ member Sunwoo. MC Ahn Young Mi asked Sunwoo how he handled so many requests for impersonations, to which he responded, “I do them all.” Ahn then jokingly asked, “And then you turn around and say ‘F*ck?'”
She then added, “Do you keep saying, ‘shoes, shoes?'” The comment was a wordplay on the Korean word for “F*ck,” which sounds very close to the Korean word for “Shoes.”
During the plenary session, MBC Radio Division 2 Head Nam Tae Jeong admitted to the mistake, saying that both the production team and the host were regretting the incident. He blamed Ahn’s spontaneous banter on her exhaustion from filming SNL Korea, which is a 19+ rated show. However, the KOCSC officials were unconvinced by this explanation and pointed out how the production team failed to apologize during the broadcast despite hearing the profanity live.
Though the show went uninterrupted on the day of the incident, Ahn Young Mi issued an apology during the following day’s broadcast. However, the KOCSC deemed this belated apology insufficient.
Meanwhile, recently another major broadcast had faced similar legal sanctions from the KOCSC due to NewJeans’ live performance. Read more about it here:
