K-pop Stars Are Selling GTA 6 in Korea, Where It Was Nearly Blocked

Jay Park and QWER front a 60-second PS5 spot, weeks after Korean raters deadlocked 3–3 over whether GTA 6 could be sold there.

In PlayStation Korea's new GTA 6 ad, a light sweeps over Seoul and a handful of celebrities drop everything to run home to their PS5s. The chef bikes there, taking his time.

The 60-second spot is called "The Wait Is Over." It went up Thursday on PlayStation Blog Korea, a week before Grand Theft Auto VI comes out Nov. 19, and Push Square picked it up Friday. Here's the catch: South Korea's game raters spent five weeks arguing over whether the game could be sold in the country at all, according to meeting minutes obtained by Inven.

Sony's post lists the cast. Rapper-producer Jay Park shows up, as do two of QWER's members, Chodan and Magenta. Oh Yul and Ryul of LNGSHOT are in it too, along with chef Choi Kang-rok from Netflix's "Culinary Class Wars." Esports caster Seong Seung-hon rounds it out, and the post says Korean fans know him as the man who calls "everything Mom hates."

Each of them starts out on an ordinary workday. Choi is hosting a cooking livestream, Park and LNGSHOT are working out, the QWER pair are rehearsing and Seong is calling a match. Then a blue glow spreads across the city and turns pink as they follow it. It leads every one of them home to a console, and the ad cuts to official gameplay of Vice City. Inven Global notes that QWER also made a Christmas carol video with PlayStation Korea last year.

Sony is also selling two limited-edition GTA 6 DualSense controllers in Korea, one black and one white, for a suggested ₩129,000 each. Both come out the same day as the game. Palm trees are molded into the shell, and the finish changes color depending on the angle. Players who pre-ordered the digital version and qualify can already pre-download.

Getting to launch day took longer behind the scenes. Inven reported that the Game Content Rating Board's first review on Sept. 10 split evenly, 3–3, between an Adults Only rating and a refusal. A refusal would have kept the game from being released in Korea. The sticking point wasn't the violence. Members balked at how often male genitals turned up in the background of scenes with nothing sexual going on.

The board postponed twice. Its researchers didn't get a playable build until Sept. 28 because of security concerns, and they couldn't finish the story in time, since the publisher told them the main story alone runs dozens of hours. "They keep pushing the boundary," one member said during the October debate, according to Inven's translation of the minutes.

The same member warned that Korea would face a huge controversy if it were the only country to withhold a rating. By Oct. 16, 10 ratings bodies, including the ESRB, had already rated GTA 6 for adults. That day Korea's board voted 8–1 for Adults Only. One vote for refusal held to the end.

So in Korea, Sony's slogan is more literal than it sounds. It took three meetings to make sure the wait would end at all.

Source: blog.ko.playstation.com, retrieved November 13, 2026. Other sources: invenglobal.com, invenglobal.com (2).