South Korea's Game Rating Administration Committee (GRAC) often graces the news pages. In fact, it is bizarrely common, because it may be the leakiest organization of its kind on the planet. Last month alone, the agency's ratings process inadvertently revealed the existence of "Quake 2 Remaster" and gave countless people hope that something, anything, might happen to free "Red Dead Redemption 1" from its Xbox 360 and PS3 prison gave to the public.

But now it's in the news for a completely different reason: according to PocketGamer.biz (via Niche Gamer), GRAC is being blamed for a corruption scandal that has apparently caused hundreds of millions of won in taxpayer money to disappear, and it is GRAC because they made the mistake of offending legions of anime game fans.

It all started last October when GRAC made the fateful decision to raise the age rating of Nexon's mobile gacha-style anime RPG "Blue Archives" from 15 to 18. to either raise the age limit for the game or change the offending scenes.

Nexon chose to do both, raising the standard age rating of the game to 18 and announcing that it would release a new, more modest version of the game at some point in the future that would maintain the 15 rating. 5,489 fans, led by Sang-Hun Lee, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, signed a protest petition, demanding a public audit of GRAC's operations and use of its resources. [Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism revealed that GRAC had lost about 700 million won (approximately $500,000) in taxpayer funds. The Korean media outlet MBC News reported (machine translation follows), "The Game Commission committed structural fraud by making payments before completing its work and creating false data in the process of promoting service projects. In other words, funds earmarked for specific projects seem to have mysteriously gone elsewhere.

Other Korean media reported that the fraud was committed by GRAC in the process of promoting projects such as the "Self-Rating Game Integrated Management System" and the "Self-Rating Game Blockchain Joint Certification Concept Validation Service."

PocketGamer also reports allegations that some funds were diverted directly to bitcoin mining, but that is likely a misunderstanding created by the "self-rating game blockchain" project involved in the scandal.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications does not seem to think it was just a mistake either: it has announced its intention to overhaul the entire agency, replacing various department heads, including at least one of those "in charge" of part of the scandal, and filing criminal charges. The ministry also hopes to recover the missing cash as damages. At least three department heads have resigned in disgrace over the whole affair.

Councilor Sang-Hun Lee, the political face of the Blue Archive petition, has declared a bit of a victory. On his blog, he wrote (again, machine translation), "The allegations of fraud raised by the senator's office turned out to be true. The Gaming Control Board has consistently censored and regulated conservative gaming, but [in reality] the organs were festering and rotting inside."

"The resulting damage had to be borne entirely by game users," Li said. Fortunately, the substantial truth, which had been hidden, came to light in this audit by the Comptroller General's office." It was an allegation that would have sunk below the surface if 5,489 users had not been with us."