I’m korean 10th grader and I enjoy browsing foreign Instagram, but lately, I’ve felt that videos and public opinion blindly criticizing South Korea based on distorted information are being amplified and reproduced.
Usually, these people enjoy one-sided bashing disguised as legitimate criticism.
There are many videos spearheaded by keywords like “chaebol,” “plastic surgery,” and “classism.” From spreading fake news-generated terms like “gaegun geoji” (attendance beggar) as if it’s a real social issue, a wide variety of creators are talking about a “Dystopian Korea.”
Comments on these videos usually lead to claims like “suicide and school violence are so frequent In korea!!!”
However, if you combine the U.S. suicide rate and “deaths of despair,” it’s twice that of Korea.
Most importantly, Korea has one of the lowest rates of school violence in the world.
Capitalizing on the demand of people who enjoy a sense of relative moral superiority while looking at South Korea’s social issues (mostly exaggerated), these creators grow further and become even larger megaphones.
The comment sections of videos about Korean appearances always feature words like “plastic surgery” and “growth hormone.”
According to my calculations, only 0.004% of Korean children and adolescents receive growth hormone injections. (7,500,000 children and adolescents and only 35,000 inject hgh)
Moreover, if you look at plastic surgery statistics, less than 1 in 100 person get plastic sergery. Why do they try to impose such a specific image on Korea?
Even in videos showing former national football team coach Hong Myung-bo arriving at the airport, the comments range from simple criticisms that the Korean public is “toxic” to accusations that Korean society as a whole has lost its mind. Because the aforementioned creators and consumers focus solely on the people’s anger while omitting why people are furious at the KFA, these misunderstandings spread further in connection with excessive distortion and negative views of Korean society.
In the recent Ha-young incident as well, seeing foreigners criticize Korea without even attempting to understand the historical context and critique shows that this is not a one-off phenomenon.
I think those people tend to criticize Korea without almost any evidence and issue moral condemnations regarding misogyny, chaebol tropes, etc. (what they think are mostly not true btw) as if they are experts, without bothering to look into the social structures.
It is so sickening to see some foreigners apply a double standard to Korea calling it “toxic” or obsessed with “beauty standards” in ways locals can hardly even feel while never saying such things about other countries.
If this trend isn’t corrected, I worry that anti-foreign sentiment will deepen in Korea. I’m a Korean teenager, and most Koreans still don’t know what’s going on; they just think K-pop has become a bit more famous.
At this point, ignoring reality and manufacturing dystopian Korea entirely inside their own heads feels like a form of techno-orientalism such like the 1980s trope where Japan was imagined as a country where robot geishas and ninjas roam and megacorps rule.
Will this ever die down? Is it simply a one-time backlash against Korea suddenly becoming “popular”?
Could you share any insights into why this phenomenon happens, and how we can fix or address it?
(translated by AI but every word was written by me.)
submitted by /u/PoemExcellent9902
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