South Korea's election body apologizes after regional slur appears in KBS vote-count broadcast

South Korea's National Election Commission issued a formal apology after a promotional video aired during KBS's vote-counting broadcast for the June 3 local elections featured an image widely associated with a regional slur targeting the Honam area.

The NEC said Friday it "deeply apologizes to the public for the inclusion of an image that could be perceived as denigrating a specific region" in a video it co-produced with KBS for promotional use.

The commission said the video was produced to help voters understand the ballot-counting observation process ahead of the ninth nationwide simultaneous local elections, and was posted on the NEC's official YouTube channel. An outside contractor working for KBSN, a KBS subsidiary, created it using AI technology through a contract with the Korea Press Foundation.

According to the NEC, the video showed a fish resembling a skate — known in Korean as "hongeoh" — emerging from a character's mouth during a scene in which the character sighs mid-conversation.

The word "hongeoh" (skate fish) is widely known as a derogatory term for people from the Honam region, used by far-right online communities including Ilbe.

The NEC said it was alerted to the problem and immediately set the video to private on its official YouTube channel after the image was flagged as potentially constituting regional disparagement.

KBS also issued a formal apology through its 9 p.m. news broadcast.

Earlier Friday, the Democratic Party of Korea's Gwangju Metropolitan chapter released a statement saying it was "devastated" that a symbol denigrating a region had been inserted into an official promotional video of the NEC — a constitutional body charged with safeguarding electoral integrity — and KBS, and broadcast nationwide. The chapter called for an apology.

The Gwangju chapter demanded that officials "stop making excuses about a simple technical error and transparently disclose to the public what AI prompts were entered that led to this hateful image being intentionally generated." It also called for "appropriate measures against the staff member who deliberately inserted the image and the supervisor who allowed it to go unchecked."

The NEC expressed regret for failing to catch the image during the final review process and pledged to examine its entire video production and review procedures to prevent a recurrence.