(Seong Sang-min’s cultural overturn) OTT autonomous rating system approaching, its contrast

For those who work in the culture and arts industry, even if they are not workers, there is a story that fans who are actively digging into their favorite culture and arts fields will know to some extent. Among countries with a similar level of economic base or cultural and artistic industries, Korea has an exceptionally large number of deliberation and rating systems under the jurisdiction of the government.

Publications are subject to post-deliberation by the Publication Ethics Committee under the Korea Publication and Culture Industry Promotion Agency. In the case of PC·Console games, games that fall under a rating other than ‘not available for young people’ are reviewed by the Game Content Rating Board, a private consignment review body, and other games (including arcade and mobile games) are reviewed by the Game Rating Board. Receiving is the rule. Legally, ‘performances without foreigners’ are the only expressions that do not stipulate not only pre-deliberation but also ex-post obligations.

Of course, each country has a different degree of difference, but there is a case of ‘grading’ according to its own standards for expressions. When the 68 Revolution spread worldwide in the 1960s, some countries led the government or under government pressure completely abolished deliberation that existed at a level close to censorship. Over the course of the 1990s, public opinion was formed that industry-level standards or guidelines for violent and suggestive content should be provided in each country, and the rating classification system was gradually formed into the current familiar one. It is mainly a way to proceed with deliberation and classification through its own rules at the level of private associations formed by each cultural industry.

Korea’s deliberation system, which has been oppressive for a long time and is still problematic

Of course, Korea’s current deliberation system is quite different from the way overseas deliberation has flowed. This is because Korea controlled almost all expressions at the level of ‘censorship’ at the government level until the 1990s. (In addition, in reality, until 2001, there were ‘out of rating’ or ‘rating suspended’, which were unconstitutional ratings equivalent to ‘censorship’, so some researchers judge that prior censorship existed until the early 2000s.) Even after the formal democratization of Korean society in 1987, the issue of censorship did not emerge as an urgent issue.

While no political party approached the issue of censorship with weight, those who had ties to the popular movement took a more active part in the issue. In the video, the video crew Jangsangotmae ‘Opening the closed school gate’ and ‘Oh! After being sued for violating the Film Act while ‘Dreamland’ was screened by each university or region without prior censorship, Jeong Tae-chun and Park Eun-ok, who are folk singers in music and are still in solidarity with various social movements, appealed to the constitution. 7th album ‘Ah, Korea… ‘ without prior censorship, and filed a constitutional complaint after being sued. On top of that, popular musician Seo Taiji and the boys who rocked Korea in the 1990s, the song ‘Sorry for the Age’ was pointed out in the preliminary censorship, so removing all the lyrics without modification and releasing it became the decisive blow to arouse the prior censorship problem. .

Through such a series of events, Korea’s expression rating review was formed into the current system. In the case of videos or games that undergo prior review, first of all, all works that apply for review are rated appropriately, creating a window to escape from the implications of censorship. Even in the case of publications, broadcasts, and Internet contents that undergo post-deliberation, the circumstances are slightly different for each area, but in principle, the focus is on ‘classification’.

However, the limits are also clear. This is because almost all deliberations in Korea are led by the government. Some of the games mentioned above are reviewed through private consignment, but due to the provisions of the Youth Protection Act, private consignment is not possible for adult-level expressions, so it is also impossible to review the rating classification for games that seem to fall under these ratings.

In addition, it is also a problem that the regulations on deliberation are legally stipulated, and at the same time, with the exception of a few exceptions, participation in deliberation is legally mandated for videos and games that undergo prior deliberation. General rating review abroad is a review led by a private institution, and legal sanctions are not immediately imposed for refusing the review and independently circulating. Mostly, works that depict strong sexual, violent, and other socio-ethical aspects at the discretion of the creator take this path. Although the general sales route is difficult to ride because of the refusal of deliberation, and there is a limit to establishing a distribution and distribution network that is very cramped and unpopular, it is only a ‘personal choice’ to the last. However, in Korea, unless there are some exceptions allowed by law, the moment they refuse to review and distribute, they become subject to legal punishment. Attempts to escape from mainstream expression and distribution are fundamentally blocked.

Of course, this trend in which the government leads the deliberation and legally controls the selection outside the deliberation is not unique to Korea. This is because Germany and Australia (Australia) also have a deliberation system led by the government and legally stipulated. However, although Australia is obviously the largest country in Oceania, it cannot be said that its own market for games or video products is largely formed in absolute terms. In the case of Germany, it is clear that the game or video industry is independently established, but complaints about the strong review system are unending like in Korea. Rather, focusing on the fact that neighboring Switzerland and Austria also use German as an official language, it often happens that products are produced in Switzerland and Austria and re-imported, bypassing Germany’s deliberation. However, Korean is only used as an official language in Korea, and there is no way to circumvent the deliberation as in Germany. (Some games distributed online try to circumvent it by saying, ‘Only supporting Korean language for Koreans living abroad, in principle, it is intended for distribution outside of Korea’.) Korea is a situation where there is no window to get out.

OTT autonomous rating system about to be implemented in earnest, it is true that it has changed

For a while, it was games that raised the issue of pre-deliberation in Korea. However, since the mid-to-late 2010s, the problem has greatly intensified in video, especially OTT. This is because the video distribution situation before and after OTT appeared has changed significantly. Until now, the situation of enjoying video was extremely tailored to the individual country where the video was distributed. There were ‘global direct distributors’ such as Sony and Disney, but these were only at the level of managing the distribution of videos, and the enjoyment of videos itself was not globalized. There were separate offline channels such as movie theaters formed according to the context of each country and online channels that sold VOD.

However, the advent of OTT has made the enjoyment of video also join the global trend. There are OTTs that focus on one country, such as Wave and Teabing, but global OTTs such as Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime Video, which are the first to create the OTT trend, plan and produce video content to be supplied to the world at the OTT headquarters level, unless there are exceptions. In principle, it is a system that is provided simultaneously all over the world on the same day. Consumers who subscribe to our OTT service in many countries receive a monthly fee for usage, and with the collected amount, we secure copyrights for previously produced videos or produce videos that attract people’s attention as much as possible and provide them to the world at the same time as much as possible. This is because OTT’s business structure is to ensure that existing subscribers continue to be consumers of the service, while attracting new subscribers and securing them as a regular source of income.

Korea’s video review system has become a major stumbling block to OTT’s business structure. Basically, in Korea, all commercially provided videos (unless they are provided for free through YouTube, etc.) must be classified through prior deliberation by the Korea Media Rating Board, but legal services are possible. This is because in order to implement the ‘open system’ in Korea, the video must be reviewed as quickly as possible.

At least in the mid-2010s, when global OTT began to be introduced little by little, starting with Netflix, the Korea Media Rating Board’s deliberation was able to roll without major problems, but OTT attracted a lot of attention and several OTT services started in Korea, which became a problem. Legitimately, these OTTs apply for classification of numerous videos for service. However, the number of reviewers or staff in charge of the Korea Media Rating Board cannot be increased enough to handle the pouring volume of reviews. As a result, backlogs occurred in which the deliberation period was endlessly delayed. Moreover, if the production country of this video is Japan, the problem becomes even more complicated. At the end of 2004, all stages of ‘Japanese cultural opening’, which began during the Kim Dae-jung administration, were completed, but in principle, video productions produced in Japan still have to be reviewed as ‘films’ rather than ‘videos’. In a situation where deliberation was already piled up, the two-lane road leading to deliberation was reduced to one lane for Japanese videos.

Since the Korea Media Rating Board was not aware of these issues, several policies were implemented. The deliberation process was simplified as much as possible, or, although limited, staffing was also implemented. However, in a situation where the current ‘Act on the Promotion of Films and Videos’ (Young Secrets Act) mandates the review of videos, and the Juvenile Protection Act mandates the government agency’s review of the rating of youth not allowed to view, the ‘review process is essential’. The major cause of the congestion phenomenon, ‘you have to receive it as’, has not been resolved. In this situation, each OTT company made every effort to circumvent the deliberation as much as possible. With the advent of OTT, small and medium-sized cable channels faced a further slump, and surprise screenings at late-night hours often occurred using the ‘exception rule for video rating review for broadcast programs’. It was the same move that OTT’Coupang Play’, which I raised in 2021, bypassed the deliberation of the comedy program’SNL Korea’ through the DMB channel.

(※ Related column: (Seong Sang-min’s cultural reversal) Coupang Play ‘SNL Korea’ escaped outdated deliberation regulations)

In this situation, after all, the industry and the National Assembly continued to say that countermeasures were needed. In the end, in September 2022, if OTT operators meet certain standards, they can autonomously rate the videos they service unless they are ‘adult-only ratings’ such as prohibition of viewing for young people and restricted screening. This was passed in the plenary session of the National Assembly. Afterwards, the amendment was implemented in March, and from March 28, the Korea Media Rating Board began accepting ‘self-rating classification service providers’ for OTT platforms. And in May, the final selection and announcement of the self-rated classification service provider will be made. The ‘OTT autonomous rating system’ that the video industry wanted so much is finally being implemented in earnest.

Improvement only for OTT, not improvement of society and culture as a whole, how effective will it be?

Only the OTT autonomous rating system has been enforced yet, and the system itself has not fully worked, so there is not much that can be said yet. At the same time, as mentioned earlier, the implementation of the OTT self-rating system is a challenge given that Korea’s cultural expression deliberation and rating system is led by the state, not the private sector, in contrast to countries with similar economic or industrial scales, and there is virtually no way to escape deliberation. There is a clear significance that it has prepared a breathing hole in the authoritarian cultural policy.

However, the significance of the OTT autonomous rating system does not go beyond just that level. Why is it not an improvement of the entire video content, but an improvement limited to OTT, rather than an overall improvement of the current review and rating review system in Korea? Of course, the answer is already contained in several articles and discussions that came out before the amendment to the Secret Service Act was passed or in the course of discussions at the National Assembly. In a situation where OTT is emerging in the video industry, the current video rating system is an obstacle, so many logics say that an alternative must be prepared quickly to prevent economic damage. In other words, a situation has developed that is practically nothing more than a ‘shortcut’ made for economic gain as a temporary measure without overall policy review or redesign at the cultural or social level.

Even looking at the ‘Self-Rating Classification Service Designation Guide’ initiated by the Korea Media Rating Board, it is difficult to say that the OTT autonomous rating system is open to all OTT platforms. This is because factors such as company size and capital are described as ‘additional points in the designation evaluation’ in the screening criteria. There are no explicit lower limits on sales, operating profit, or capital stock. However, these regulations indirectly support OTT, which is smaller in scale than global OTTs such as Netflix, such as ‘Purplay’, an OTT specialized in independent films, short films, and women’s films, and Korean large-scale OTTs such as Wave and Teabing, but which are of great help in establishing the diversity of video products. It is the same as excluding

Rather, the necessary question should have led to why, as of the 2020s, only Korea has a deliberation system in which issues are continuously raised from inside and outside? In the 1990s, the current deliberation system was hurriedly established due to a series of preliminary censorship unconstitutional decisions, but the law and system continued without reflecting the social and cultural changes that followed. At least, the extent of games has gone through several twists and turns to create a partial private review consignment and the ‘game self-rating business operator system’, the prototype of the current OTT autonomous rating system, but this is also the case with some large domestic and foreign companies that already operate large-scale game businesses. Criticism that it is limited to is constantly raised. This is because it is not easy for small and medium-sized game companies or individuals or clubs that produce independent/experimental games to enjoy the benefits of this system.

However, the government, the National Assembly, and the industry as a whole, which has to consider the overall trend of the industry, cannot say anything. At least, the cultural movement that led to the abolition of prior censorship in the 1990s has already lost a lot of energy to raise this issue. In a sense, the introduction of the OTT autonomous rating system is a portrait that symbolically shows the situation in which the cultural context has disappeared and only ‘economic logic’ remains when talking about culture. In particular, despite the fact that it was independent/art films or various film festivals/screenings that were severely restricted and damaged by rating deliberation, efforts to cover various areas of video could not be found perfectly in the discussion of the OTT autonomous rating system. However, if it is a change in recent years that the application period for exemption from rating review at film festivals and screenings has changed from application within 30 days before screening to application within 20 days, it is a change, but it is a very minor change.

In particular, although it was pointed out that this government-led video review may have been abused as a means of controlling the free presentation of culture and arts in the process of investigating the ‘blacklist of culture and arts world’, the reality of which has been revealed since 2016, improvement or deliberation on this The fact that the follow-up work that discusses the reconstruction of cultural policy in general, including , has not yet been followed, gives rise to many concerns. Even if it is not immediately visible, the movement to allow citizens with various characteristics to enjoy various videos without any barriers as much as possible according to their own tastes, and to make videos for themselves again, is a movement that is slowly emerging as a commercial streaming platform such as ‘YouTube’. It’s been a long time since I passed it on

And what remains is the internal flow of the board, which is still focused only on policy governance and maximally efficient profit creation, which are still managed by bureaucrats. Clearly, with such a policy trend, it would be possible to reap large profits at minimal cost. However, the system that encourages even the government’s policies, let alone all attempts to deviate from the mainstream while only the logic of efficiency survives, is raising the possibility that it will lead to a crunch in the continuous circulation itself. Korean music, which has become difficult to find anything other than idols, or Korean games, which have rarely seen attempts other than ‘Lineagelike’, have been talking about ‘crisis theory’ in recent years, and eventually, Korean theater films and broadcasting videos are gradually being used in movie theaters. and losing its roots in media and growing its dependence on global OTT.

In such a situation, continue based on economic logic. To what extent will laws and policies that emphasize only efficiency enable us to escape from this crisis? Paradoxically, the current crisis is the result of a collaboration between the government’s policy and the private sector’s movement, which focused only on creating effective profits immediately without considering cultural enjoyment and vitality. However, instead of escaping from such a hell, relying again on the logic that created it would only create a greater paradox and depression. In a sense, the OTT self-rating system is a messy situation that chose to return to the past at a time when new policy reform is needed.