More videos have disappeared from the YouTube channel of Park Wi, a YouTuber who drew fierce backlash after releasing CCTV footage of a fall he suffered on a KTX train and subsequently suspended his activities.
According to Social Blade, a YouTube channel statistics site, one video was made private on Thursday and two more on Friday on Park's channel, "Wiracel." The number of public videos, which stood at 798 at the time of the controversy, had fallen to 778 as of Tuesday — a drop of 20 in roughly one month.
Immediately after the controversy broke, Park deleted the video titled "Why I'm releasing the CCTV footage," which was directly related to the incident, and then removed 13 additional videos from his public list within a week. Some of those videos are said to have included social-experiment content addressing the mobility rights of people with disabilities and everyday inconveniences they face.
The "Wiracel" channel, which once had about 1 million subscribers, had fallen to approximately 936,000 as of Tuesday.
Park said in August that he had fallen while descending a ramp used to exit a KTX train, and released CCTV footage of the incident. The footage showed Park's wheelchair wheel catching on the foot of a social service worker who had been trying to help him, causing him to fall.
In the video, Park said he was "so angry that (the social service worker) had placed his foot on the ramp" and that, although the worker "politely apologized," he "couldn't accept it in the moment."
Once the video spread, criticism poured in that it was inappropriate to publicly air the mistake of a worker who had already apologized at the scene — on a channel with about 1 million subscribers. It also emerged that Park had uploaded the footage without including the moment when the worker apologized.
Park subsequently deleted the video and issued an apology, saying he "had not considered the position of the worker who had done his best to help me and had apologized sincerely."
The Seoul Metropolitan Government received a stream of complaints demanding Park be removed as a promotional ambassador, and he ultimately stepped down from the role on his own in late August.
Park became known as a YouTuber after sharing his rehabilitation journey following a 2014 fall that left him with full-body paralysis. In 2024, he married Song Ji-eun, a former member of the K-pop group Secret. The couple also appeared on SBS's "Dongsang Imong 2 — You Are My Destiny," a reality show in which they shared their married life.
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