Cho Kuk threatens legal action over controversial JTBC broadcast

Cho Kuk, head of the Cho Kuk Innovation Party's innovation policy research institute, has announced intentions to file a complaint with the Press Arbitration Commission following a controversial broadcast on JTBC’s YouTube program ‘Genre Only Yeouido’.

During the program, commentator Kim Jun-il suggested ‘Minhyuk-dang’ as an alternative party name for the Cho Kuk Innovation Party and remarked that it sounded like something that would ‘lead to execution’. Cho criticized the remark for trivializing the ‘Inhyukdang’ (People's Revolutionary Party) incident, a historical case of judicial murder where individuals were executed under fabricated evidence during the Park Chung-hee administration.

The Cho Kuk Innovation Party issued a statement expressing deep indignation, accusing the program of mocking the victims of the Inhyukdang incident and the history of South Korea’s democratization movement. In response to the backlash, the program’s production team apologized via social media, deleted the segment, and removed the offending remarks from the video. Commentator Kim Jun-il also issued a personal apology on social media, citing a lack of personal discipline.