Nguyen Thu Ha, head of the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism’s Cinema Department.

According to Ha, the film has been stopped from showing in local cinemas after a scene incidentally depicted China's unilaterally declared "U-shaped line" on a map of South-East Asia.

The department is checking the film version sent by distributor CJ CGV Vietnam, Vietnam's largest cinema chain and a unit of South Korea's CJ CGV, for being censored and licensed to be shown in Vietnam, Ha said.

The film Abominable which was pulled from Vietnamese cinemas for including a scene featuring a map which shows China's unilaterally declared "nine-dash line" in the East Sea.

In many cases, the screened version is not the one sent to authorities for being censored. For instance, some trailer scenes of Vietnamese film The Third Wife or Vo Ba which was banned screened in Vietnam due to sex scenes featuring the 13-year-old girl main actress were not included in the approved version, she clarified.

Ha said that the department’s film censoring council has 11 experienced experts who often spent hours to assess a film of less than 100 minutes long.

“We are working on the case and will update the information to the public. We admit the responsibility for the problem in the film Abominable,” Ha emphasised.

DreamWorks Animation and Shanghai-based Pearl Studio produced the film about a Chinese girl Yi who discovers a yeti living on her roof. The animated feature was first shown in Vietnam on October 4.