The Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) imposed a 640 million won penalty surcharge on KT for deceiving consumers by failing to properly disclose quantity limits during the Galaxy S25 pre-order process.
The Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) held its seventh meeting at the Government Complex Gwacheon on the 8th and approved corrective measures against KT for violating the Telecommunications Business Act.
According to the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC)'s investigation, KT announced on KT.com as a "common event notice" for Galaxy S25 pre-orders that "if there is no separate sold-out notice, you can receive the benefits." However, KT in practice limited participants to "the first 1,000" and unilaterally canceled the contracts of 7,127 people who applied for pre-orders. KT claimed the omission of the notice was a simple mistake by the person in charge.
The Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) said, "The 7,127 people whose pre-orders were canceled are users who completed the service subscription procedures such as identity verification and entering payment information through KT.com and could have been provided with actual services, yet KT restricted subscriptions without justifiable reason," and resolved to impose a corrective order and a 640 million won penalty surcharge.
On the same day, the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) also approved presidential decrees and rules for enforcement, follow-up measures to implement the three broadcasting laws (Broadcasting Act, Foundation for Broadcast Culture Act, and Korea Educational Broadcasting System Act). After reporting the agenda at the first meeting on the 10th on the previous month, the Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) gathered opinions through legislative and administrative pre-announcements and a forum, and finalized and approved the draft amendments on the day.
The final plan first specifies the "scope of workers" related to the programming committee. The scope of workers in the reporting, news, production, and programming institutional sectors is defined as those who have signed open-ended employment contracts with a broadcaster, with executives at the department head level or higher excluded. The specific scope of workers in the relevant areas is to be determined by the chair from the employee commissioners of the labor-management council, taking into account the programming independence of the broadcaster.
The "representative of workers" within the programming committee is elected by a majority of workers in the reporting, news, production, and programming institutional sectors, and in the case of multiple candidates, the top vote-getter may be elected. Responsibility for managing the election is assigned to the chair from the employee commissioners of the labor-management council, and the operator's duty to cooperate is specified. If there is a labor union to which a majority of eligible voters belong, that union is to designate the representative of workers.
The Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) also set the standard amount of fines for failure to appoint a programming officer or to comply with programming regulations at 10 million won. It made it mandatory for terrestrial radio and terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) operators to establish a viewers' committee.