SEOUL: The South Korean government's YouTube channel was purportedly hacked on Saturday to broadcast a cryptocurrency-related video including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, but has been restored, the source privy to the development said.

At 3.30 a.m., the official government channel on the video-sharing website looked to have been hacked since its name was changed to "SpaceX Invest" and it was broadcasting a live cryptocurrency interview with American billionaire and SpaceX creator Musk.

An official at the culture and tourism ministry, which overseas the YouTube account, said they had become aware of the situation at 6 a.m., took security measures and restored the account at 7:20 a.m.

The representative stated that it was believed that the account's ID and password had been taken.
According to reports, Google, the parent company of YouTube, admitted that the channel had been hijacked.

An official from Google Korea stated that the company was investigating the incident's origins at the time.  The attack comes after this week's theft of a YouTube channel run by the tourism ministry's Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO).

The channel, which has about 509,000 members, was reportedly targeted twice, once on Thursday and once the following day. The channel is not accessible right now. 

A KTO official said that Google automatically blocks access to the account if it spots abnormal connections.

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