[Olympics] Absurd '#Hwang Daeheon Foul'... Comment Attacks Even Target BTS

China's Brazen SNS Attacks "Referee's Decision Was Correct" Defense
Explicit Criticism of Opponent Countries and Athletes... When RM Posted Hwang Daeheon Video, "Hatred"
Mass Posting of Spam Unrelated to Human Rights Issues under '#GenocideGames'

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The controversy over biased judging triggered in the short track speed skating event at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics is spreading into a social media (SNS) war. As the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Korea approaches this August, the escalating anti-China and anti-Korea sentiments between the two countries are emerging as social and economic burdens.

In particular, China's brazen attitude is the cause of the worsening situation. While Korean male short track skaters Hwang Daeheon (Gangwon Provincial Office) and Lee Junseo (Korea National Sport University) were unfairly disqualified, messages expressing hostility toward the opposing country, along with defenses of the judgment, continue to appear on Chinese SNS.

On the 8th, the hashtag ‘International Skating Union (ISU), Hungary and Korea's appeals dismissed’ recorded over 3 million views on Chinese SNS Weibo, ranking first in real-time search terms. Other top-ranking terms included ‘Two Korean players refused interviews and left the arena,’ ‘Korean foul,’ ‘Liu Xiaolin foul,’ and ‘Hwang Daeheon foul.’ Accusations poured out claiming that Hwang Daeheon committed fouls even at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, labeling him a ‘habitual offender,’ saying his ‘methods are dirty,’ and that ‘malicious fouls are Korea’s only strength.’

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On Weibo, the article posted by Chinese media Global Times titled ‘ISU dismisses appeals by Korea and Hungary’ received as many as 14,000 comments. Commenters insisted the referee’s decision was correct and openly insulted not only the athletes but also Korea. BTS RM posted a video of Hwang Daeheon overtaking a Chinese player with ‘clap’ and ‘thumbs up’ emojis, only to be targeted with comment attacks including ‘vomit’ emojis and remarks like ‘We hate BTS.’

Those revealing the true face of hateful sentiment are the ‘Jiulinghou (born in the 1990s)’ and ‘Linglinghou (born in the 2000s),’ whom the Chinese Communist Party regards as its core support base. Influenced by the prominent patriotic propaganda of the Xi Jinping era, they express anti-Korean sentiment through Sinocentrism and extreme exclusivism. Frequent clashes occur on SNS with young Koreans raised in liberal democratic systems.

There are also claims that pro-China Twitter accounts are dominating hashtags criticizing China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur ethnic group, thereby diluting Western criticism. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, citing analysis from Clemson University’s Media Forensic Hub, that from October 20 last year to January 20 this year, over 132,000 tweets used the hashtag ‘#GenocideGames.’

[Image source=Yonhap News]

This hashtag, combining the meaning of genocide and the Winter Olympics, was used by human rights activists and Western politicians to raise awareness of human rights issues in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region during the Winter Olympics.

According to the report, from late October last year, automatically generated accounts on Twitter began posting large volumes of spam unrelated to the Xinjiang human rights issue using this hashtag. Clemson University professors Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren analyzed that such activity appears intended to dilute the effect of the hashtag in creating online solidarity. They also suggested there was an intention to make Twitter’s monitoring system recognize the hashtag as spam, causing all related posts to be deleted.

In fact, during the period investigated by Clemson University, 67% of tweets with this hashtag were found to have been deleted according to Twitter’s spam-related policies. Twitter told WSJ that it first identified a series of accounts believed to be sponsored by China in December last year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.