K-Drama

Netflix officially removed “Little Women” from Vietnam after serious historical distortion 

A governmental body of Vietnam asked Netflix to stop broadcasting “Little Women” in the country due to severe historical distortions and misinformation.

On the afternoon of October 6th, the K-drama “Little Women” was officially removed from Netflix Vietnam. As a result, searching for the series will show no results within the Southeast Asian nation, and the drama has also vanished from all trending lists. 

Previously on October 3rd, the head of Vietnam’s Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information issued an official statement directed at streaming platform Netflix, asking for the removal of the K-drama “Little Women” from Netflix Vietnam. The statement also pointed out historical distortion contents in said K-drama, particularly at 58:01 – 58:22 of episode 3 and 05:41 – 07:01 of episode 8. According to Vietnam’s Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, the two aforementioned time stamps include contents that defame Vietnam during the Vietnam war, insult the nation, and thus violate the broadcasting laws specified in Clause 4, Article 11 of Vietnam’s Media and Broadcasting Law. 

In addition, in an official document, the Vietnamese Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information also sets a deadline for Netflix to get the request done on October 5th. However, by the end of October 5th, “Little Women” was still available on Netflix Vietnam, leading to many Vietnamese viewers flooding Netflix’s Facebook posts with comments asking the platform to take the drama down as soon as possible.

“Little Women” follows three sisters who were born into a poor family. A major plot line of the drama centers on the “Jeongran community”, a secret society whose original members are Korean soldiers who participated in the Vietnam War. Starting from this, misconceptions about the war that Korea participated in as an ally of the US military continued to appear in the characters’ dialogues.

The Vietnamese audience’s wave of criticism, rage, and boycott towards “Little Women” grew and increased on social media as soon as the episodes with historical distortions aired. The drama was earlier accused of stealing photos from the Japanese cosmetics company Shiseido in addition to its historical revisionism, infuriating the audience even more.

Source: K14

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