In episode 6, "The King: Eternal Monarch" showed King Gon and his army in a war with Japan in his aim to protect the Kingdom of Corea's territory. The controversy arose when citizens questioned the presentations of the video.
The SBS drama, amid competition ratings, still reached a high percentage. As per data gathered, episode 6 aired on May 2 and gained 7.4% nationwide ratings and 10.3% on the second part. The series' second episode reached double-digit ratings and next is last week's episodes.
During its first two episodes, the drama series encountered disputes about the structures presented on the scenes. The management issued apologies on the matter.
Another headline issued from the said series is the Japanese warships, which do not symbolize or does not meet the requirements as what they wanted to state from the story.
The conflicts show the history of both countries rooted way back in the old times. It came to be known during World War II, which issues Japan's use of people from Korea as laborers and "comfort women." Since then, trades and other dealings from the two countries provided intense dislike for both nations. Although the drama is fictional and not based on true events, the citizens made remarks on the scene.
Producing director Baek Sang-Hoon of "The King: Eternal Monarch" released a statement to the media regarding the controversy, as stated below.
"There has been a lot of criticism over episode 6 that aired on May 2 because of a naval battle scene between the fictional Korean Empire and Japan. The criticism is about the similarity between the Japanese battleships that were edited using 3D modeling and CGI and the currently existing Korean battleships.
As the director, I sincerely apologize for causing this controversy, regardless of the reason.
But I can tell you that we did not intend to put a Japanese flag on our Korean warships or to mislead viewers into mistaking our Korean warships as Japanese warships.
First of all, we were planning to film the scene in Korea around mid-January and use open-source reference materials. We prepared to film the materials needed for CGI effects in the Japanese part overseas at the end of January, as we planned to produce materials and use 3D editing for the incomplete parts.
However, due to COVID-19, it became impossible to shoot overseas. The prolonged COVID-19 situation made it impossible to shoot domestically as well. In the end, we restored to using scenes that focus on the actors as well as open-source resources, paid video reference materials, and 3D editing.
However, because I am not an expert (warships), I did not recognize the specific characteristics of warships that look similar to each other, and even though I should have checked every detail of the actual data. I made the mistake of choosing the data mainly based on the storyboard.
Even though we were dealing with a conflict between a fictional Korean empire and Japan, we were still complacent and should have let experts supervise the content to prevent possible errors in advance.
I sincerely apologize for causing discomfort to the viewers due to my desire in wanting to make up for the incomplete parts, using the current situation and lack of time as an excuse, as well as my complacency of not checking every detail even though I should have.
In the future, as a citizen who understands our nation's history, I promise to pay careful attention to all details. Once again, I apologize.
I also promise to revise the controversial scenes, in which (the Japanese warships) look similar to Korean warships as soon as possible so that viewers do not feel uncomfortable watching re-runs and VOD content domestically and abroad."
