Vietnam government requested for removal of k-drama ‘Little Women’ from Netflix after violation of media and cinema laws throughout episodes.
The Vietnamese government asked Netflix to take down the South Korean TV drama adaptation ‘Little Women’ beginning Wednesday over alleged distortion of events during the Vietnam War.
The news was reported in the Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre, citing that the misinformation violates media and cinema laws according to Le Quang Tu Do, head of the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information.
Wrongful depictions were apparently seen in episodes 3 and 8 when actors spoke about the war, in which one of the Korean veterans said that "in our best battles, the kill-to-death ratio for Korean troops was 20:1. That's 20 Viet Cong killed for one Korean soldier dead."
He then elaborated that the ratio even peaked higher in South Korea's favor among the country's elite soldiers, which can be interpreted wrongly as South Korea has long faced allegations that they committed mass killings of Vietnamese civilians.
A letter was also sent to Netflix, coming from Vietnam's Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information saying that the series violated the country's law against "distorting history, denying revolutionary achievements, offending the nation and the nation's heroes".
The letter then added that the series "conveyed dialogues between characters that praised the crimes of Korean mercenaries" during the war.
Although Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP, Do reported that the streaming site had removed the episodes by 3 p.m. Thursday.
"Netflix has always upheld and abided by the laws and agreements regarding content with violations. However, due to the large number of films, they admitted that there are mistakes, still. Netflix said it would ramp up self-monitoring and minimize the mistakes," Do added.
The production company of tvN’s “Little Woman” responded to the claims and released a statement after the program stopped airing on Netflix Vietnam on October 7.
“We are addressing the concerns regarding a portion of the [story] set-up covered in ‘Little Women.’ We will place more caution in societal and cultural sensitivity issues in future content production,” a representative of Studio Dragon shared.
Tags: #Netflix, #kdrama, #misinformation