Producers of 'Seol Min-seok's Naked World History' apologize for inaccuracies

Celebrity historian Seol Min-seok appears on TvN's educational variety show "Seol Min-seok's Naked World History." [YOUTUBE CAPTURE]

TvN's educational variety show "Seol Min-seok's Naked World History" apologized on Monday night after being publicly criticized by an archaeologist for delivering inaccurate historical facts in an episode aired Sunday.

Kwak Min-soo, the head of the Korea Institute of Egyptology, criticized the program on Facebook on Sunday saying, "I just watched ‘Seol Min-seok's Naked World History’ addressing Cleopatra, and there are so many incorrect facts that it's hard to mention the errors one by one."

Kwak stressed that many of the stories introduced in the program are far from the facts, including the background information during the Cleopatra era, information related to the Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, and the story of “Veni Vidi Vici.”

“Talking about historical facts and rumors together is definitely a good strategy to draw attention when teaching history, but it’s important to clearly distinguish the two," Kwak said.

A day after Kwak uploaded the post, the production crew of the show made an official statement, saying, "We sincerely apologize for some errors in the process of delivering ancient facts out of the vast amount of historical data."

"As we tried to compress a vast amount of information into an hour-length lecture to fit the broadcasting schedule, we had to proceed with the timeline in a bigger context. There were parts omitted in the process, but we aired the edited version because we judged that there was no significant impact on the bigger context. We sincerely apologize to everyone who was uncomfortable watching the show."

TvN’s "Seol Min-seok's Naked World History," which started airing this month, was highly anticipated by history lovers for featuring famous celebrity historian Seol Min-seok as the lecturer, who has been teaching Korean history since 2002. Seol has not made any statement regarding the issue.

BY KIM YEON-AH [kim.yeonah@joongang.co.kr]