SMAP banned in Korea. Why?!

[Taro Toporific]

[Caustic Saint]

I remember during World Cup they relaxed the restriction, allowing some Japanese music during broacasts of games or highlights shows.

Japanese animation is very popular, and 95% of what you can buy in Korea is bootlegged. Amazingly enough, there was a shop in Seoul that sold legit copies, but they were horridly expensive. (Even more than Jlist, if you can imagine that!) Legit stuff was about $65-80 a disc and bootlegs run about $8 a disc. Which one do you think people are going to buy?

The only "exception" to this rule that I've seen are movies made in Korea that have Japanese dialogue in them. I saw a great one called "2009: Lost Memories" which was an alternate history tale in which Japan never lost control of Korea. Japanese was the official language of Korea, and everything Korean (language, art, etc.) was suppresed. I was surprised when I watched it, knowing the local feeling about Japanese stuff, but it was a good show, with an interesting story.