From Kim Gu to the Joseon Coal Mine: What Korean TV Is Airing for Liberation Day 2026

For the 81st anniversary of Korea's Liberation Day, KBS, MBC, and EBS have coordinated one of the more substantial themed programming slates in recent years, spanning documentary, variety, and educational formats across roughly two weeks. The occasion has long drawn special broadcasts, but this year's lineup is notable for the range of figures it centers: not just the well-known names, but the unrecorded and the complicated ones.

KBS 1TV opens the day on August 15 at 1 p.m. with Gwansun Dongsun, a network-produced documentary that pulls a relatively obscure figure into the foreground. Nam Dong-sun was a close friend of independence activist Yu Gwan-sun; the two were arrested together during the March First Movement of 1919 and both served time at Seodaemun Prison. Where Yu Gwan-sun became a national symbol, Nam Dong-sun was largely absent from the historical record. Actress Lee Se-young plays Nam Dong-sun in dramatic reconstruction sequences, with Cheon Hee-ju as Yu Gwan-sun.

Later that evening at 11:05 p.m., Back to the Music Season 2 airs a Liberation Day special titled That Song Is Ga-Na-Da-Ra, a Korean alphabet phrase that signals something distinctly Korean. Singers So Chan-hwi and Shin Yu travel to Osaka's Ikuno district, home to one of Japan's largest Korean communities, where they meet Yang Gye-hye, a third-generation Korean-Japanese resident. The episode also visits a care home for first- and second-generation Korean grandmothers and the Osaka Geonkuk School, tracing how Korean language and song have functioned as a connective thread across generations of the diaspora.

On August 16 at 9:30 p.m., History Special: Time Traveler begins a planned series on Yi Wan-yong, the official who signed the 1910 annexation treaty and became the definitive symbol of national betrayal in Korean historical memory. The first episode revisits newly uncovered archival materials to examine how Yi arrived at that moment: he had been, earlier in his career, a reformist official with pro-American sympathies and a senior figure in the Independence Club. The episode does not rehabilitate him, but the framing reflects a broader shift in Korean historical documentary toward showing political trajectories rather than fixed moral categories.

KBS 2TV runs its own slate. Immortal Songs at 6 p.m. on August 15 stages a Liberation Day special titled Nameless Devotion, Immortal Songs, bringing together actor Hong Ji-min (daughter of independence activist Hong Chang-sik), actor Yang Jun-mo, crossover group La Poem, and singers Seo Moon-tak, Ji-sun, Han-hae, Kim Jun-su, An Ye-eun, and musical actor Im Gyu-hyung. The program honors six independence activists, with 52 descendants of independence merit holders sitting as the jury.

At 9:20 p.m. the same day, Men Who Do Housework Season 2 features singer Park Seo-jin and his younger sibling Hyo-jung completing an 8.15-kilometer historical running course, the distance chosen deliberately to mirror the date. Starting from Tapgol Park, where the March First Movement began, the route runs through to Seodaemun Prison. Park Seo-jin is joined by history storyteller Sun Kim, who narrates the significance of each site along the way. The episode also includes a segment at a restaurant run by a descendant of a national merit holder, where the pair attempt to order 815,000 won worth of food, the figure again echoing the date.

EBS takes a more regional approach on August 15, with Choe Tae-seong and Seo Gyeong-seok's Travel in Color airing at 5:40 p.m. as a special titled Answer Me 1919, Suwon. The episode visits Seonjangdae fortress, the Independence Movement Road (a street mural honoring local activists), the site of independence activist Im Myeon-su's Samil School, and Hwaseong Haenggung palace, which was damaged and partially demolished during the colonial period and has spent the past century being restored.

On August 16 at 11:55 a.m., the lecture program Planning Lecture: To the Youth features Sun Kim again, this time addressing a younger audience about independence activists including Yi Bong-chang, Yun Bong-gil, and two foreign advocates: Homer Hulbert and Ernest Bethell, an American missionary and a British journalist respectively, both of whom worked to publicize Korean resistance to Japanese colonial rule.

On August 17 at 9:55 p.m., EBS Docuprime airs the second part of 1942 Josie Coal Mine, subtitled Remember Us. The first part aired August 10; this episode covers an underwater investigation conducted 85 years after the mine flooding that killed Korean forced laborers, and a second tragedy that occurred during the investigation itself. Actor Ryu Seung-ryong narrates.

EBS returns on August 20 at 10:50 p.m. with the second part of The True Record of Yu Il-han, a documentary on the life of Yoo Il-han, founder of the pharmaceutical company Yuhan Corporation and a figure who spent his adult life between the Korean-American community and the independence movement. The production is notable for its method: more than ten modern historians spent a year cross-referencing previously accepted accounts of Yoo's life against primary sources including the Sinhan Minbo and the Dong-A Ilbo, checking claims that had circulated in the historical literature without being traced back to first-hand documentation. Scholars from Ewha Womans University, Yonsei University, and the University of Connecticut, among others, appear on camera. Broadcaster and former announcer Oh Sang-jin reads archival excerpts in a DJ format the production describes as blending documentary with podcast.

MBC closes the broader window with the most high-profile variety entry. Balpumsa (a title combining the word for "legwork" and the Chinese character for "history") airs August 26 at 9 p.m. as a special marking the 150th anniversary of Kim Gu's birth. The program sends former Infinite Challenge cast members Park Myung-soo, Jung Hyung-don, and Jeon Jun-ha to Shanghai and Jiaxing in China to trace the route Kim Gu followed during his years in exile leading the Korean Provisional Government. History lecturer Choe Tae-seong and Catholic University professor Kim Jae-won join as academic guides. The three comedians last worked together regularly on Infinite Challenge, which ended its run in 2018, and their reunion for this specific purpose carries some weight for audiences who followed that show.