That’s correct. The Korean version of the Wii was highly restricted compared to other regions.
Aside from basic channels such as the News Channel and Weather Channel, almost all other channels were never released in Korea. What makes this especially interesting is that, during investor briefings, Nintendo had mentioned that various channels—including the Internet Channel via WiiWare—were planned for release.
In Korea, the GameCube was handled by Daewon Game. However, this was essentially an “unofficial official release”: only the packaging was localized into Korean, while the console system and the games themselves remained entirely in Japanese. As a result, although Korean Wii consoles physically included the GameCube disc slot, Nintendo Korea disabled GameCube support through software restrictions.
Another notable case is Super Mario Galaxy. In Korea, it was released under the title “Super Mario Wii Galaxy Adventure.” This was due to trademark issues: Samsung’s “Galaxy” smartphones and Daewon Game’s “Galaxy” console had already saturated the electronics market with the “Galaxy” name, causing Nintendo’s trademark application to be rejected. Nintendo Korea attempted to re-register the title, but after repeated rejections, they were forced to include “Wii” in the name instead.
To clarify a common misunderstanding: the reason the Wii U was never officially released in Korea was not solely due to piracy, although that did play a role. The much bigger factor was the catastrophic failure of the Nintendo 3DS in the Korean market. Even after massive clearance sales through the official store, large amounts of stock remained unsold—something many people still vividly remember.
Because of this, Nintendo Korea decided not to release the Wii U at all. In response, dedicated Korean Nintendo fans took matters into their own hands, creating fan-made Korean localizations and even distributing Korean-language versions of game software.
Interestingly, due to these circumstances, Nintendo Korea was also initially hesitant to officially release the Nintendo Switch. However, against expectations, the Switch was eventually launched in Korea and went on to become a massive success—leading to the official release of the Switch 2 as well.

+ Lastly, the majority of software officially released in Korea reused the original Japanese cover art with minimal changes and was almost always released much later than in other regions. In addition, the only titles to feature full Korean voice support were Wii Fit, Wii Party, and Dance! Made in Wario—making them rare exceptions in an otherwise very limited localization lineup.

Fun fact about the Wii U. There is an internal region code in the Wii U's system files, but it never got used because it never released in Korea. You can region change your Wii U to be Korean, meaning it won't play any games anymore because there are no Korean region Wii U games!

Korea had a reality show based on the Wii called "All together with Wii" Wii로 다함께.

honestly i only knew about the wii in korea because of the intro scene of train to busan where su-an gets the wii as a birthday gift from her father.

When I used the Wii as a Korean, The first console officially released by Nintendo Korea was the NDS, but before that, GameCube discs were sold in Korea through a third-party distributor. Since those discs were region-locked to Japan, they didn’t work on Korean Wii systems.
Back then, not many people bought actual Wii game discs. Pirating was extremely common, almost seen as the “normal” thing to do, especially because of the region lock and the limited number of games released in Korea. Most people just used SD cards to homebrew their consoles. So that Nintendo Korea was so pissed off, the Wii U was never officially released in Korea at all.

As a kid, I didn’t even know what a GameCube disc was, and I was confused by the weird flap on top of the Wii that covered the GameCube controller ports.

Also, the plug looks very similar to the European one, but it is actually a bit thicker.

The specific cause of Error 003 is KOR Wiis being region-changed. All non-KOR versions of the Wii Menu had a check implemented from a certain update onwards, which attempts to use the Korean decryption key (which is different from the decryption key used literally everywhere else in the world) despite the Korean key not normally being present on non-KOR Wiis. If it succeeds, the check fails because now the non-KOR Wii Menu knows it's on a region-changed system, since the traditional region-change process didn't actually get rid of the Korean key.

Fun fact: the Korean version of Just Dance 2 is missing 3 maps (the contest winner maps) and released a year later compared to every non Japanese version (which Japan had its own unique game instead of JD1/2, JD2/3, and JD4/2014 as one game per combo I mentioned, plus also a 2014 version with exclusive Yo Kai Watch maps)

I remember seeing K-Pop Dance Festival on Amazon years ago with many reviews confused as to why the game didn’t work on their systems. I desperately wanted to learn more about it back then. Thank you for featuring and playing it in this video!!!

Besides Hangul text, the Korean Mii channel also has some unique symbols you can put in your name such as a hot spring symbol and an old school telephone symbol

19:12 you mention how you find it weird to have Gangam Style in a Wii game, but Just Dance 4 did have DLC song support on the Wii, and Gangam Style came out as a DLC song for that game! Tho tbf JD4 was also a launch-title for the Wii U and that Gangam Style DLC didn't came out for a couple of months after that...

If you thought Korea’s history with Nintendo products was weird, wait until you hear about China’s history with them(And I’m talking about Mainland China)

26:50 - Dal-Shabet got me nostalgic, but at 26:59 2NE1 really knocked it out of the park for the girl groups for generation 2.5 and at 27:00 BIGBANG knocked it out of the park for the boy group side of things. I'm glad that I grew up in a time where K-Pop was still K-Pop when I was 11 in 2011.
Edit: 27:15 & 27:18 - Man, that was a song I couldn't stop singing, along with the other songs mentioned. 😆

15:30 I love how they had to call Super Mario Galaxy as Super Mario Wii because Samsung Galaxy 🤣🤣

The Game Rating and Administration Committee (GRAC) in Korea, the ESRB in the United States, PEGI in Europe, and CERO in Japan all have similar roles. However, unlike almost every other country’s game rating organizations, Korea established GRAC as a state-run prior censorship body with powerful authority to review, censor, restrict distribution, or even completely block games based on legal grounds. The foundation of this system was the “Sea Story” slot machine scandal, which shifted Korea’s game market away from a global standard of self-regulation and justified the creation of GRAC under the name of mandatory ratings—effectively censorship.

As a result, games released before GRAC’s establishment sometimes included gambling elements (such as the mini-games in New Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo DS). But afterward, any content with Japanese cultural influences, violence, gambling, or sexual themes had to be either removed or classified as restricted to adults only. Examples include 51 Worldwide Games on the Switch, Blue Archive, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Persona 5, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA X, and Project DIVA MEGA39’s.

i know about the korean wii because of rhythm heaven fever's korean localization (rhythm world wii), where a handful of textures were changed to remove allusions to japanese culture

Error: 003
unauthorized device has been detected.

4:40
Actually, Korean plugs are slightly thicker than EU ones. You'll find that Korean plugs often won't fit into European outlets, and vice versa—EU plugs are too loose for Korean outlets, which can cause sparks if the cord wiggles.

error 003 happens if an internal korean key is missing from the system. If the korean system menu boots without the korean key, error 003 happens. if US, EU, or Japan menus boot with the korean key, it also triggers error 003. homebrew can easily remove or add the korean key, making the error easy to bypass nowadays.

This is really cool! I also find Korean game stuff quite interesting, especially due to its niche in comparison to Japan. You cover stuff is great detail it’s really cool.

I found in my Korean Wii copy of CoD: World At War, in the manual they have screenshots of the Korean Wii Menu, that leaves in dev channels visible. The Wii Menu uninstaller and Disc Check channel.

You’d think someone would hide those before taking screenshots and printing it into the manual 😅

19:04 Just Dance 4: Am I a joke to you?