Police on Friday are investigating the suspected theft of the Hanwha Eagles official YouTube channel's Silver Creator Award after finding the commemorative item listed for sale online.
The Daejeon-based team of the Korea Baseball Organization confirmed that the Silver Play Button has indeed been missing, presumably lost during the team's 2025 relocation to Daejeon Hanwha Life Ballpark.
Eagles officials said they reported the case to the police after seeing the button posted for sale at the second-hand e-commerce platform Karrot. They initially thought that the item was just lost, which is why they did not report it to the authorities right away.
The silver play button given to creators with at least 100,000 subscribers has the inscription "Presented to Eagles TV," the official YouTube page of the team, identical to the photo of the item that was put on sale earlier this week. It originally had signatures and messages written by Eagles players, but they seem to have been erased in the photo posted by the seller.
The seller asked for 120,000 won ($81.1) initially but raised the price to 150,000. The item was displayed as "reserved" before the post was deleted completely.
Police are investigating the post's author, specifically how they acquired the commemorative item.
The Eagles TV has more subscribers than the official YouTube channels of any other team in the KBO, currently with 542,000 subscribers as of Friday. The team has had a solid fan base even throughout its years-long slump in the 2010s, but its popularity received a huge boost when it reached the 2025 Korean Series, falling in five games to the champion LG Twins.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
