By Haram Lim | Updated on Jun 13, 2026 at 06:56 AM
JTBC Co. Ltd., the broadcaster owned by South Korea’s media giant JoongAng Group, defaulted on securitized loans and was downgraded to junk by a local ratings firm, triggering a series of rating cuts across the conglomerate.
JTBC defaulted on 20.6 billion won ($13.6 million) of combined securitized loans due Friday, according to NICE Investors Service. NICE lowered the broadcaster’s long-term credit rating to CCC and its short-term rating to C, while also placing it on review for a further downgrade, it said in a report on Friday. The missed payments have “significantly increased” JTBC’s liquidity risks, including refinancing risks tied to its other securitized borrowings and corporate bonds, NICE said.
The downgrades highlight mounting financial pressure across JoongAng, one of South Korea’s largest media groups. The conglomerate is grappling with weakening operating performance at key businesses while carrying about 2.8 trillion won of debt in total, a burden that NICE said was excessive relative to its cash-generating capacity. The situation raises fresh concerns about the country’s credit market as well, coming just months after the rare collapse of JR Global REIT Co. and putting renewed focus on weaker corporates.
NICE also downgraded JoongAng Ilbo, the group’s newspaper arm, citing rising funding uncertainty across the group following JTBC’s rating cut. Several other local ratings agencies took similar action against JoongAng’s other businesses on Friday, including ContentreeJoongAng Corp. and SLL JoongAng Co. Ltd.
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JTBC said in a statement that it made every effort to address its liquidity crunch, including operating under an emergency management system to streamline operations. The broadcaster attributed its inability to meet certain debt obligations to a sharp contraction in the television advertising market and the industry’s rapid shift toward digital and streaming platforms.
It will mobilize all available internal and external resources to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, and news programming, major sports broadcasts and other content production will continue as normal, it said.
Concerns are growing that the fallout could spread across the broader group given the financial dependence among its businesses, according to Sang-man Kim, a credit analyst at Hana Securities. “Unless the group implements groundbreaking self-rescue measures and liquidity-boosting plans, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that JTBC’s debt default issue could spread to the entire group,” he said on Saturday.