School parents fret as popular stars hoist glasses online

Parents are increasingly concerned that images on social media such as YouTube of Korean celebrities enjoying a drink or two could encourage underage drinking.

Jisoo of girl group Blackpink, left, and An Yu-jin of girl group IVE drink alcoholic beverages on a YouTube show. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Parents are increasingly concerned that images of Korean celebrities enjoying drinks circulating on social media could encourage underage drinking.

Critics note that minors can easily access drinking-related videos on social media, where there are few legal restrictions regarding such content.

An office worker in her 40s said she was shocked to hear her 8-year-old son ask questions like “Does alcohol taste good?” and “What happens if you get drunk?” after watching a YouTube clip of a member of a popular K-pop girl group advertising an alcoholic beverage.

“When you search for the girl group member's name on YouTube, her soolbang video appears at the top of the page," she said.

Soolbang are videos of content creators drinking alcoholic beverages, often to excess.

“Children are very easily exposed to alcohol through platforms like YouTube," she said.

Online soolbangand interview videos that feature scenes of drinking have become popular in Korea.

In the past month, popular K-pop stars such as Jisoo from girl group Blackpink, An Yu-jin of IVE and members of boy band Seventeen have appeared in similar videos, where they drank alcohol during interviews before the camera.

These YouTube clips recorded as many as 15 million views as of Sunday afternoon.

More and more celebrities are appearing in drinking-related videos thanks, at least in part, to demand from fans, who enjoy the rare moment of seeing their favorite stars kicking back with a drink in hand.

A case shared by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in December 2022 from its casebook featuring drinking scenes on YouTube [MINISTRY OF HEALTH AND WELFARE]

Despite the rising popularity of drinking-related videos, managing and controlling such content is nearly impossible as social media platforms like YouTube are largely unregulated. YouTube itself has no strict age restrictions for watching drinking-related content on the platform.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare did amend an enforcement decree in June 2021 to ban the display of alcohol advertisements on or in public transportation to protect minors.

However, it does not regulate drinking-related content on social media.

The ministry's Korea Health Promotion Institute monitors content that could encourage underage drinking on television, YouTube and streaming services.

However, those contents are not necessarily censored.

According to the institute, the average number of views on YouTube videos subject to monitoring was 800,000 as of 2021. The institute monitors the top 100 videos, based on the number of hits, that are tagged with drinking-related keywords such as soolbang.

Not a single video restricted children or students from watching them, despite around 90 percent containing problematic drinking scenes.

“Content from broadcast media such as television can at least be deliberated upon by the Korea Communications Commission,” an official from the institute said.

“Media platforms such as YouTube are difficult to regulate as there are no legal restrictions in place.”

The official said that creating a casebook with examples of drinking scenes featured in Korean media every year is the best they could do.

The ministry and the institute are therefore considering amending guidelines for drinking scenes in media so that they can ask YouTube channel operators to set age restrictions for videos with drinking scenes.

Critics say the lack of legal restrictions on these platforms is a serious problem, considering how more and more underage students are hitting the bottle. The underage drinking rate rose 2.3 percentage points from 10.7 percent in 2021 to 13.0 percent last year, according to a Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency survey released in April.

Experts blame Korean society’s permissive views on drinking.

“The media’s outdated concept that alcohol must accompany deep conversations should disappear,” Seo Hong-gwan, head of the National Cancer Center Korea, said, adding that the negative effects of alcohol should be emphasized just as they are for tobacco.

Others stress the need for institutional intervention to regulate harmful scenes.

“The participation of non-governmental organizations or civic groups could lead to more reports that stir up public opinion as the government currently only monitors such scenes,” Lee Hae-kook, a psychiatry professor at the Catholic University of Korea Uijeongbu St. Mary’s Hospital, said.

BY CHAE HYE-SON [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]