There is provided a backlight unit that determines whether a lamp performs an abnormal operation by detecting a voltage that is induced in a power conversion transformer without using a complicated and expensive detection circuit. A backlight unit having a protection circuit using induced voltage detection according to an aspect of the invention includes an inverter part including a primary coil receiving power and at least one secondary coil converting the power from the primary coil to AC power set beforehand, a lamp part including at least one lamp receiving the AC power from the inverter part to emit light, a detection part including conductors detecting voltages electromagnetically induced in the secondary coil, and an abnormality determining part comparing detection voltages from the detection part with a reference voltage set beforehand.