Iām currently watching Radiant, but I just canāt wrap my brain around it. Han Ji Minās character is struck by a rather horrible affliction, yet her parents never do anything. They just let her sulk in her room. The mother cries, sure, and she busts down the door eventually, but she never takes her to a specialist, you know, someone who might know a thing or two about this condition. Itās not like they know about that weird watch, either. Their child is sick. With this in mind, shouldnāt they seek immediate help? Wouldnāt you? I donāt get it. Have I missed something? I donāt feel motivated to continue and find out (Iām at episode 3).
Iām having the same issue with āThe Undateablesā, too. Everything under the sun is censored plus all modern English background songs have been replaced with jazz, yet the subtitles for the songs remain. Very odd when thereās jazz music replacing an upbeat song and everyone is bopping to something slow.
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Hi!
So i have a question related to censorship.
Iām currently watching Reply 1988, and in this version of the Reply series Iām seeing a lot of blurring that I did not encounter in the previous two editions, be it when the TV is shown on screen, or the camera pans past a wall, and actually they blurred out a book title, which was really oddā¦ what is the cause of all this blurring?
The next kind of censorship this show has relates to smoking and drinking, is this a Korean thing, or did Viki censor the actual cigs/booze that a person is holding, even when no words are present? This is the funniest type of censorship, because youāll see this blur attached to a hand as it goes towards the face, and in some shows if a person blows out the smoke, the actual smoke is blurred.
And finally, weaponsā¦ Why do knives get blurred, but not guns?
thanks for the help!
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I found this article but it still donāt explain why censor a scene that is part of the story plot. Iām guessing they will promote this things by letting the viewers see this things (knives, cigarettes, tattoo etcā¦)but out in the streets people see worst things so I donāt see this as making sense at all. I guess the Government controls and restrict those things on TV.
https://www.koreaboo.com/stories/korean-television-censorship-3-major-targets/
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Itās OK to show swords used to massacre others, but itās definitely wrong to show knives. Ehhhā¦ Sure, fine, whatever. 
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Reply 1988 is heavily censored. Viki blurred out music video/ads/programs that were showing on the TV and posters in the drama (which sometimes are part of the plot, but you understand nothing since it is all blurred out) because of copyright issues, but this is only on Viki. The drama was airing in a local television station in my country and they blurred nothing.
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@adrianmorales
I was Chief Editor and All Languages Moderator on The Go Back Couple and have done a check on the channel ā Every episode is at 100% except for Episode 5 which is missing one line of some students chanting something at a school festival. I donāt see anything missing!
Could you please be more specific as to Episode and location where you suspect something has been removed? After we start subbing anything, if viki staff remove anything, it is invariably at the broadcasterās request. Viki staff informs us of the location where subs have been removed. And the volunteer subs are saved at the very end of the subtitles which can only be seen by team members. The subs are kept there until I ask that they be removed. So volunteer work does not disappear without notice.
The most frequent reason we lose subs is that background music may be violating copyright but those are pretty rare nowdays. Often the broadcaster removes the music and substitutes the OST written for the drama which we then sub. But as I said, this is pretty uncommon nowadays. Once in a great while the KCC files a complaint about a specific scene so the broadcaster re-shoots the scene and inserts a new scene. Viki staff inform us of the change and we sub the new scene.
From the time I started at viki 10 years ago to now, it is a very very very rare event now to have the KCC censor something on a K Drama. Ten years ago there might have been a penalty over some sort of product placement or a scene in which a mother in law is mercilessly beating her daughter in law and the daughter in law in self defense strikes back ā these were seen in the past as failing to show respect to an elder but this type of censorship does not happen anymore. Actually, sometimes I wish the KCC would crack down on the incessant product placement for Subway (just kidding).
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re: Reply 1988
I am the channel manager and chief Editor on Reply 1988. So far as I know, there was nothing changed from the original version (which was broadcast in the USA on a now defunct site) and the viki version which was uploaded about 6 months after the original broadcast. We were super fortunate to receive a complete transcript of every episode ā the most complete script of a K drama I have ever had the privilege to view. The transcript was prepared post broadcast and contained the titles and artists of even of most of the incidental background music as well as the custom OST songs. The transcript was so complete, here and there would be a note in Korean āunintelligibleā. Other people on the internet created lists of all the background music so we could easily compare if anything were missing.
When there are accusations of ācensorshipā, please question why would viki removed content? As someone intimately involved in the production and edition of the English subtitles I can see no reason to censor the drama.
If anything is out of sync now, please tell me the episode number. If a whole episode is out of sync, tech support usually repairs it when I tell them the number of seconds to move the subs.
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I remember in When You Were Sleeping, she was singing and dancing in her bathroom to some music, but then the music was changed to something else because of copyright reasons?
Scene in Reply 1988 were not removed. We mean that scenes where blurred out. Like Shows/ads/music videos the characters are watching on TV.
Those old tv and movie scenes were blurry from the start when the drama wasnāt on viki yet I think the producer did it because of possible copyright issues. Copyrights on tv and movie stiff from the 1970s are still valid. Copyright lasts 56 years
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Iām sure that was the case when you initially worked on it. Thank you for your hard work. I truly appreciate it.
Sadly, since then, Viki has taken a big bucket of vaseline and smeared it all over the drama. Every poster, every logo has been blurred out to the point where itās impossible to see anything. Scenes with Karaoke songs and TV clips have also been removed, making them pointless, with irrelevant dialogue too. I couldnāt watch the thing. I had to find a different site. Itās a shame. 
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@Stephen-154
I was just informed that Episodes 9 and 10 of Reply 1988 are totally out of sync. A news clip was cut out of Episode 9 and a tv program clip out of Episode 10, Iām pretty positive the reasons were for potential copyright violations. Unfortunately the subs are now all out of sync - so Iāve asked tech support to re-sync and told them how much the existing subs have to be moved. Apparently they cut the videos but did not remove the subs for the deleted parts. Fortunately, the deleting was done with the first few seconds of each episode so I could find the start of the out of syncs immediately.
If anyone else finds out of syncs in Reply 1988 please pm me with the Episode # and the approximate location when the subs went out of sync and i will have the subs re-synched.
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So, the irony of censorship is such: The more chance something shown on TV has to do real damage in life, the more it is censored.
Example 1. Knives vs. Guns
Distribution of guns in Korea is tightly regulated. To the point only police officers and high-ranking gang members will have one. Knives, on the other hand, are a standard kitchen item and the No 1 murder weapon in Korea. Hence, a person is far more likely to use a knife to harm another person, than a gun.
Also, if you think of the gang fight scenes in Korean movies and series. Those suckers are handling only bats, clubs, bars and an occasional knife. In a large fight you will have only a couple of gang members dead.
Compare that to American television where gang members are sporting semi-automatic guns and they all end up dead aside from the hero
Example 2. Sex vs. Violence
Same seemingly backward logic applies. Kids are far more likely to delve into unprotected sex than they are attacking someone with a gun/knife. So sex is considered at least the same level of evil as other violence, if not more. And movies and series with just a smidge of sex are immediately labeled PG 18.
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He is singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69kRnoWiBow
Edit: but this scene is the same on Viki as well.
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So irritated that viki still censoring the words subtitles and subs in Team Discussion
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