Despite being the host country of the 2018 Winter Games, South Korea is far behind other countries in its TV coverage of the Paralympic Games, which kicked off on Friday.

Three major Korean broadcasting stations, KBS, MBC and SBS, are each expected to spend a total of around 18 to 30 hours on programs devoted to the Paralympic Winter Games.

As the 2018 Paralympics will be held for ten days from March 9 to 18, this means that major TV networks in Korea are to air about two hours of Paralympic programs per day.

Several other countries including the US, Canada, Japan and the UK have set aside at least 60 to 100 hours of TV broadcasts for the Paralympic Games.

During the 2018 Winter Olympics, which lasted for 17 days from Feb. 9-25, Korean broadcasters aired more than 150 hours of Olympic programs, suggesting a wide disparity between public recognition of the Olympics and the Paralympic Games.

Among the three major broadcasting stations, only SBS has a specially organized website for the 2018 Paralympics. As of Friday, SBS is scheduled to broadcast about one live game per day and one program showing highlights each day after midnight.

By Cho Yun-myung (yunc39@heraldcorp.com)