Naked Bodies Shown for Five Seconds on Live TV. August. 01, 2005 06:08. zozo@donga.com bsism@donga.com.

During a live music program, two performers took off their clothes and exposed their genitalia for four to five seconds on national TV, an unprecedented accident in Korean broadcasting history.

The incident took place on Music Camp, a weekly MBC television music show, and was broadcast live on Saturday. Around 4:15 pm, a five-member punk rock band, RUX, was performing on stage with another band in one of the programs segments named Is this song good? Suddenly, two members of the other band, identified only by their surnames Oh (20) and Shin (27), dropped their pants and danced.

Wearing heavy makeup on their faces, they jumped to the front part of the stage during the interlude, lowered their pants, and exposed their private parts. After four to five seconds, the camera showed the audience, but it was too late.

The program has no viewing age limit.

The two men are members of an indie band Couch. The producer of Music Camp, Park Hyun-ho, said, A director assistant saw them smoking in the waiting room before the performance and told them not to, but there was no problem in three rehearsals. He added, RUX said Couch is their performing partner, so I allowed them to come, but I didnt have any information about what kind of band they were.

Is this song good? is a section that introduces an underground band every week, recommended by five music experts. A music critic, Park Joon-heum (43), who introduced RUX to the program, said, The band members say that they performed in the way they normally did, but there is no indie bands that exposes their privates in clubs.

After the incident, the MBC website and other message boards were flooded with critical comments from netizens. Over 10,000 replies were posted on the message board for viewers opinions of Music Camp, shutting down the server temporarily. As the footage and captured photos of the scene are rapidly spreading on the Internet, website operators are busy deleting them.

During the rest of the show, the show hosts repeatedly apologized for the accident, and apologizing subtitles also appeared. The MBC network announced an official apology on its website and on News Desk, its daily news program, saying, We offer a heartfelt apology to viewers for the indecent accident that occurred during a live show.

The MBC network called an emergency meeting presided over by Chairman Choi Mun-soon and attended by the networks vice chairman, executive program director, executive creative director and others on July 31, and decided to take the program off the air and to commit the production team to a personnel committee.

An official of the Korean Broadcasting Commission said on July 31, We are considering sanctions on Music Camp by applying broadcasting law. The Show and Entertainment Program Deliberation Committee moved up from August 4 to August 1 to discuss imposing sanctions on Music Camp.

Meanwhile, on July 30, the police booked Shin and Oh without detention on charges of indecency and interference with business. The police committed a drug test to find out if they were under the influence of drugs, but the results were negative. Their hair samples have been sent to the National Institute of Scientific Investigation for further testing.