Chinese video app Douyin counts the cost of insulting Korean war hero as advertising halted
‘Voluntary’ ban will cost operator millions of dollars in lost revenue, including US$450,000 a day from a single client, agent says
The hugely popular Chinese short video app Douyin has suspended its commercial operations after an internet watchdog weighed in on a controversy involving insulting remarks made about a hero of the Korean war.
On Sunday afternoon, the watchdog said it had instructed the firms, which include the New York-listed search engine Sogou, to remove all commercials that mention Qiu and that all of them had “voluntarily suspended [their] commercial services”.
According to Beijing’s narrative, Qiu chose to burn to death instead of running away and exposing the location of his comrades during a battle in 1952.
His story is included in Chinese school textbooks and he is hailed as a hero.
The online controversy started on June 5 when an advertisement for Douyin appeared on Sogou that invited people to view “jokes about Qiu Shaoyun getting burned”.
The following day, the cyberspace administration issued a statement saying it had spoken to the two companies and ordered them to delete all related content. Beijing ByteDance Technology issued an immediate apology.