Launched locally by the government in 1996, with the motto "
Korea for the World, the World for Korea," the
Korea International Broadcasting Foundation began broadcasting as Arirang TV in 1997. The foundation started broadcasting overseas in 1999 within the
Asia region. The name of the broadcast comes from the traditional Korean folk song
Arirang. In January 2010, the network split its programming into two categories, news and non-news, with additional news bulletins and current affairs programs being added to the schedule, as well as more cultural programming. The Vietnamese drama series '''' premiered on 4 January, with
subtitles in both
Korean and English. In 2011, Arirang TV was the subject of an embezzlement investigation by the
Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC). The ACRC reported that the – now former – chief producer of
Showbiz Extra, an entertainment news program, was embezzling money by underpaying employees and instead diverting the money to "borrowed-name" bank accounts. These bank accounts were used as fake employees for payroll. One example was a bank account belonging to "Kim Jin-ah", who was supposed to be a 20-year-old translator for the show. This supposed employee was paid from the network between September 2006 and December 2007. Following the ACRC investigation, two Arirang TV senior officials were sentenced to prison. The first was sentenced to 10 months in prison for embezzling and the second was sentenced to 6 months in prison for embezzling . Shin Woo-jeong, a judge with the Seoul District Court was quoted in
The Korea Times, "The two claimed that it was common practice for the employees of the company to inflate production costs." Following the embezzlement scandal in 2011, suggestions had emerged for the merger of Arirang TV and
KBS World, considering that Arirang, like many other English-language media outlets in
South Korea, was suffering from insufficient funding, staffing, and programming content. The network later stabilized its operations. In September 2016, Arirang TV became one of the first South Korean channels to air 24 hours a day on UK television services, such as
Sky UK and
Freesat, while also expanding to the United States via
DirecTV and the
United Nations in-house network. In 2015, Arirang TV launched a dedicated channel for the United Nations headquarters in New York, broadcasting in English to promote international understanding of Korean culture. In January 2018, due to budget cuts, the network cut its programs from 36 down to 18. This program cut also led to approximately 190 freelancers and contract workers also losing their jobs. The budget cuts came after the parent company, Korea International Broadcasting Foundation, no longer had enough money to cover the entire budget. The 2018 budget was reduced by compared to the previous year. The network also lost approximately one-third of its journalists during 2017 because of the financial issues. ==See also==