Opposition to PD Association Spreads

The PD Association is an organization for establishing bonds among producers at network broadcasting companies, including KBS and MBC. Recently, there are increasing voices within the organization that it is siding with a particular political faction and being managed in an arbitrary manner by a few leaders.

More than 20 producers at KBS formed a body aimed at normalizing the PD Association yesterday, urging the leadership to resign to take the responsibility of causing internal division due to its siding with a particular political force and biased action. Also, Chung Soo-chae, chairman of the Senior Labor Union at MBC, expressed his will to leave the association that day. The Dong-A Ilbo met with them.

“The PD Association is basically a social gathering of broadcasting producers. But the leadership is participating in every social issue with political bias, worsening internal division,” said Oh Jin-gyu, chairman of the body for normalizing the PD Association. He also said, “The association has failed to play its proper role and is causing division and conflict among members.”

He explained that producers who have been criticizing the biased attitude of the PD Association decided to launch a body based on the conclusion that the arguments from individual producers cannot resolve the existing problems.

He went on to say, “A senior member of the PD Association recently posted an argument that analyses of content and IP addresses of postings criticizing the association revealed that the criticism is driven by a handful of people. However, the truth is that there are many members against the direction that the association is following, although they do not openly express such feelings. The posting prompted those who have criticized the association to gather together and establish an organization based on the shared perception that we need to form a shared front to awake the PD Association leadership.”

He added that the launching of the organization as the “ultimatum to the PD Association.” In its mission statement, the organization demanded resignation of the current leadership and full disclosure of spending details of membership fees. It is planning to begin a campaign to boycott the payment of membership fees and a signature drive.

In particular, he pointed out that the PD Association ran the advertisement that the “candles lit by the public will protect KBS” on the June 11 edition of the Hankyoreh and the Kyunghyang Shinmun against the will of the members.

He explained, “Before the ad was published, I met with the leadership face to face and expressed concern. They said that they would either not publish it or publish it in a more cautious manner, but published it without any advance notification.”

Furthermore, Oh raised questions about the association’s explanation that it published the ad with donations from 505 producers.

He said, “The proposal of running an ad came up in late May and the ad was published on June 10. That is not enough time to get donations from 505 people, collect the money and pay for the ad. As there is a chance that the association used some of the membership fees for the ad, I demanded disclosure of spending details of the membership fees.”

He also pointed out that the leadership should be criticized for actively participating in the candlelight vigils to demand keeping current KBS President Jeong Yeon-ju at the helm.

Oh said, “More than 50 producers have expressed their will to join our organization so far. I want to believe that the problems can be resolved through dialogue with the leadership.”

Oh has produced entertainment programs including “Open Concert” and “Korean Old Music Stage” and is now working at the deliberation department.

suhchoi@donga.com