Critic questions Jeon Hyun-moo's packed schedule, 'spontaneous travel' segment

Broadcast critic and columnist Jeong Seok-hee has weighed in on allegations that broadcaster Jeon Hyun-moo's "spontaneous travel" segment on MBC's "I Live Alone" was staged.

In a video posted Tuesday to her YouTube channel "Jeong Seok-hee Terebi-pyeong," a TV criticism channel, Jeong brought up the controversy and said Jeon's grueling schedule made her wonder whether it was all really necessary.

"He arrives at Incheon Airport in the morning on the day he returns, and there was apparently a recording session scheduled right away that morning," Jeong said. "You could tell from the interview footage that his voice was starting to go. I thought, 'Here come the signs of another breakdown.'"

She said Jeon had failed to perform properly on air due to his voice on multiple recent occasions. "On MBC's 'All-Knowing Younger Sibling,' his voice gave out completely, and around the same time he was broadcasting with a hoarse voice on both 'I Live Alone' and JTBC's 'Talk Correspondent 25,'" she said.

"If you take on a heavy workload but manage your stamina well enough not to cause trouble for others, that itself is a skill and a talent," she said. "Right now, anyone can see that is not happening. So why push through an unreasonable travel schedule on top of everything else — especially while insisting the trip is his time to recharge?"

Jeong also questioned why viewers should have to put up with the inconvenience. "Who's going to stop him from taking a 29-hour, inefficient overseas trip on his own? But if a recording for another program is waiting the moment that trip ends, that changes things entirely," she said. "Cast member Cocoon looked at that scene and said, 'It seems like he should be resting at home' — and wasn't that exactly right?"

Jeong also criticized the staging allegations. "A round-trip business-class ticket runs 2 million to 3 million won, and economy is well over 1 million won — and that is not Jeon's money, it is the broadcaster's," she said. "At a time when every broadcaster is talking about the need for fiscal austerity, are they really going through all this trouble just to give one celebrity a healing getaway?"

She added that if the production team wanted to sell the trip as spontaneous, they should have shown the process of buying plane tickets, renting a car and booking accommodation — "at least in words. It is stranger that they did not anticipate the public would be suspicious," she said.

The episode followed Jeon as he secured a last-minute flight to Almaty, Kazakhstan, for a brief break amid a packed schedule. The show was drawn into a staging controversy after observers pointed out that tasks difficult to accomplish on the fly — such as the production crew purchasing plane tickets and arranging a rental car — appeared to have been handled in advance.

The production team did not directly address the allegations, saying only that the shoot "proceeded smoothly with the administrative procedures required for local filming and the cooperation needed for on-site production."