Ulleung County on 'Threats to Force Local Specialty Purchases' Claim: "False; Legal Action to Follow"

"Confined and pressured into buying goods during a package tour"
Ulleung County: "No such reports were received"

Ulleung County said it would take legal action over a YouTube video alleging that tourists were pressured into buying goods during a package tour, calling the claims false.

A video titled "The Incident of Being Forced to Buy Something on a Package Tour to Ulleungdo" was uploaded to a YouTube channel on the 23rd. Screenshot from YouTube.

On October 27, Ulleung County posted a statement titled “Ulleung County’s Position on False Videos About Ulleungdo” on its county government website and elsewhere.

“A video was recently posted on YouTube claiming that people were pressured into making purchases, confined and threatened during a package tour to Ulleungdo, and that the incident was reported to the police and the Coast Guard,” the county said. “After checking with the relevant agencies, we confirmed that no reports related to the claims made in the video had been received.”

Earlier, a video titled “The Incident of Being Pressured into a Purchase on the Last Day of a Package Tour in Ulleung County” was posted on October 23 to the YouTube channel “Sigoreobu,” which has 20,000 subscribers.

The video claimed: “On the last day of a three-day, two-night package tour to Ulleungdo, a tour bus heading to the passenger ferry terminal stopped in front of a local-products outlet in a remote mountain valley. A tour guide in his 50s herded 30 passengers into a warehouse, lowered a metal shutter and locked it from the outside.”

It continued: “The warehouse was piled high with boxes of unidentified squid and pumpkin taffy. The guide took the microphone and said, ‘Don’t even dream of going back to the mainland today unless each of you pays 300,000 won for a set of local specialties.’ With only an hour until the ferry departure, the passengers protested, but the guide mocked them. One passenger filmed the guide’s threats and reported him to the police for special confinement and coercion.”

The video went on to say: “Police arrived at the scene immediately, forced the shutter open and seized the passengers’ boarding passes. The guide, who was sentenced to prison as an offender caught in the act of special confinement, knelt and apologized to the passengers, then transferred 10 million won to the passenger who had reported him as compensation for emotional distress and other damages.”

The video received about 90,000 views and 2,000 likes. One viewer commented that they were the chair of the Ulleung County Charter Bus Operators Association, writing, “If this really happened, we should reflect on our actions and expel the company involved. But if this post is false, the person who uploaded it must be held responsible.”

Ulleung County warned: “We plan to take legal action against the spread of false information that damages the reputations of local businesses and residents and causes anxiety among tourists. We will continue to respond firmly to actions that harm the local community through fabricated information.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.