EBS Apologizes for Copying Japanese TV Program

By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter

The Korea Education Broadcasting System (EBS) apologized Tuesday for plagiarizing a Japanese television program. It said "Sci-Fun", a science experiment program, outsourced to a subcontractor, was found to have copycatted a similar Japanese TV program.

The program in question was aired July 23 and carried out experiments regarding musical instruments and paper cup phones.

However, the experiments borrowed ideas from the Japanese program "Odoroki no Arashi", a science experiment program hosted by the popular Japanese pop group Arashi. Plagiarism was first raised as an issue by Arashi fans in Korea.

"We issued an apology to our audience and cancelled the contract with the subcontract producer", an EBS official said. "We will take all steps to stem piracy in the future".

EBS also admitted that another episode of the program, aired last week, involving grafting watermelons and other melons, is suspected of being a copy as well.