YG comedy show makes fun of China

Korean security guards wearing the traditional apparel of China's Qing Dynasty. Capture from Netflix

By Dong Sun-hwa

YG Entertainment's latest eight-episode comedy, “YG Future Strategy Office (YG FSO),” is in trouble in China for allegedly mocking the country.

In the fourth episode, Korean security guards in the traditional clothes of China's Qing Dynasty, said, “I am a pig” in Chinese. Chinese media Sina slammed the scene on Thursday as “an obvious abasement.”

In the same episode, Jinu from hip-hop duo Jinusean, playing a senior YG executive, said hip-hop was the key to targeting the Chinese market, using a map of China to support his claim. The map, however, did not show the entire regions of China, angering Chinese viewers.

Map of China in “YG Future Strategy Office (YG FSO)” excluded some regions in China. Capture from Netflix

As a result, the Instagram of Yang Hyun-suk, founder of YG Entertainment, was bombarded with malicious comments from Chinese fans, and Yang apologized.

“I am sorry for Chinese fans ― I have already instructed people to modify or delete the wrong content as soon as possible,” he wrote. “We will be more careful in the future.”

“YG FSO” is a sitcom that deals with a variety of events happening inside a Korean entertainment company. Seungri from K-pop boy band BIGBANG plays the lead role.