Scenes of drinking liquor and getting intoxicated are increasingly becoming a part of YouTube and online streaming shows. gettyimagesbank

Korean media content producers are under fire for excessive depictions of alcohol consumption, with broadcasts mostly affecting underage viewers by normalizing the practice that often entails intoxication and self-destructive misconduct, industry observers and experts said.

An academic forum held earlier this month criticized entertainment shows on TV channels, YouTube and on-demand streaming service providers for their depictions of binge drinking. Participants agreed to introduce new guidelines for all platforms to limit the exposure of viewers to drinking scenes.

An official from the Korea Health Promotion Institute under the Ministry of Health and Welfare said that nine out of 10 TV shows with the highest ratings in Korea had at least one drinking scene. The official from the institute's excessive drinking prevention team further added that out of the 556 most popular TV shows throughout the past five years, 88 percent, or 488, contained such scenes.

The average number of drinking scenes per episode in TV shows was 0.3 in 2019, according to official data. By 2023, this figure had risen to 1.1.

MBC's "I Live Alone," one of the most popular observational entertainment TV shows, has repeatedly been slapped with warnings from the Korea Communications Standards Commission, a nongovernmental media watchdog, for airing scenes where celebrities drink alcohol and become inebriated or show signs of losing self-control. The show on the public broadcaster is rated PG-13.

Ryu Hee-lim, the commission's chairperson, who also participated in the forum, criticized the show for not keeping the broadcaster's public duty of raising awareness on the dangers of drinking.

"The show, despite the broadcaster's anticipated role, instead portrayed drinking as if it was a solution for suffering from all kinds of stress," he said.

The Korean public has increasingly expressed animosity in recent years against cases of DUIs, or driving under the influence — due to high-profile incidents involving celebrities — but still remains "generous" toward drinking itself, according to an environmental health professor from Korea National Open University in Seoul.

The problem is worse on YouTube and streaming platforms where government regulations against showing inappropriate scenes, such as binge drinking, currently do not apply. Celebrity talk shows where participants are welcome to get intoxicated have recorded some of the highest ratings. Comedian Shin Dong-yup and rapper Lee Young-ji host such shows on YouTube.

A pool of YouTube results when searched using the term "drinking show" or similar keywords was dangerously large, experts have confirmed. Among results with the top 100 views, all of them contained at least a scene with a "misconstruing effect" — which either portrayed drinking positively, showed inappropriate speaking or actions under the influence, or encouraged minors to drink.

Experts have also found that streaming programs' number of liquor-drinking scenes per episode in 2021 was 5.6, far higher than that of TV.

The country's Broadcasting Act states that a show should not promote "immoral conduct" and "lewdness, decadence or violence which has a negative influence on the guidance of children and juveniles."

"Media content production must consider its influence on juvenile viewers," the professor said. "And the government must raise the companies' social responsibility and strengthen punishment and achieve that purpose."