Jang Won-young, Seohyun and BTS, artists who received malicious comments for greeting “Lunar New Year”
Girls’ Generation’s Seohyun, IVE’s Jang Won-young, and others are suffering from unexpected baptism of malicious comments after sending New Year’s greetings.
On the 22nd, the day of the Lunar New Year, Jang Won-young posted a picture of herself wearing a hanbok on her SNS account and left a message saying, “Have a happy New Year’s Day.” Seohyun also left a message saying “Happy New Year. Happy Lunar New Year” along with a picture of herself wearing hanbok.
Since then, they have received intense fire from netizens who are presumed to be Chinese. They expressed their anger through collective actions, such as leaving the comments “Happy Chinese New Year” and plastering green emoticons with images of vomiting. Also, there were comments denigrating hanbok as Korean-Chinese clothing, saying, “It’s really pretty to wear our Chinese Korean-Chinese costumes.”
A war of words also took place in the comment section of BTS’ YouTube video. After writing the title of the video released on the 21st as ‘BTS 2023 Happy Seollal Greeting’, all 7 members appeared wearing hanbok to greet the Lunar New Year. It was pre-filmed before member Jin’s enlistment, and fans cheered as they were able to see the complete BTS.
The problem is that even in this video, some netizens systematically commented “Happy Chinese Day”. In response, many foreign fans, including Korean netizens, defended BTS by using words such as ‘Seollal’ and ‘Luna New Year’.
Amid such indiscriminate malicious comments and criticism from Chinese netizens, Seo Gyeong-deok, a professor at Sungshin Women’s University, who explained a comparison between Korean unique holiday New Year’s Day and Chinese New Year’s Day, was also terrorized. On the 21st, Professor Seo posted on his personal SNS, “We are running a large-scale campaign to change the word ‘Chinese New Year’, which is misused around the world, to ‘Lunar New Year’.” He pointed out that it is translated as ‘Spring Festival’ in English. In addition, the Spring Festival was held when the dynasty was replaced, and the date of the event changed frequently, but it was fixed on January 1 of the lunar calendar from the Han Dynasty, so it was argued that the origin and meaning are all different from the Korean New Year.
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However, despite Professor Seo’s explanation, the attacks from Chinese netizens do not stop. Professor Seo revealed that he is blocking thousands of Chinese netizens’ accounts, and expressed his anger at Chinese netizens who are pouring out malicious comments to his family.
Source: Daum
