13 social-commentary videos vanish from YouTuber Park Wi's channel amid CCTV controversy

YouTuber Park Wi has made 13 social-commentary videos private on his channel following a controversy over his decision to post CCTV footage of an accident in which he fell while disembarking from a KTX train.

According to OSEN, the removals on Park's YouTube channel "Wiracel" continued even after he deleted a video titled "Why I'm releasing the CCTV footage" on Aug. 23. The channel had 798 public videos at the time of that deletion; 10 more were made private on Wednesday and three additional ones on Friday, bringing the total down to 785.

Among the videos switched to private were two uploaded in August 2022: "How a paraplegic person rides the KTX" and "I can only sigh."

Park had tagged those videos with keywords such as "social experiment camera" and "uncomfortable truth," presenting them as social-commentary content.

The older videos resurfaced online as the CCTV controversy grew.

Some viewers criticized the videos' format — which juxtaposed overseas cases with domestic situations — and certain subtitles, arguing they painted an unfairly negative picture of attitudes toward people with disabilities in South Korea. Others said they sympathized with the intent to highlight the reality of mobility rights for people with disabilities.

It remains unclear whether Park made the videos private in response to the recent controversy or as part of a routine content cleanup.

Earlier, Park fell from a portable ramp while getting off a KTX train in his wheelchair last month. He uploaded CCTV footage of the incident to his channel, fully exposing the face and mistake of a social service worker who had been helping him disembark.

Criticism followed over whether it was appropriate to expose on a channel with about 1 million subscribers a worker who had already apologized at the scene.

After making the footage private, Park issued an apology. "I failed to consider the position of the worker who did their best to help me and apologized sincerely," he said. "I viewed only negatively a mistake that occurred in the process of trying to help me better."

The subscriber count for "Wiracel," which had exceeded 1 million, has since fallen to around 955,000. Park canceled some previously scheduled public appearances and stepped down as a promotional ambassador for the Seoul Metropolitan Government.