“Racism controversy” Sam Okyere “Korea has a strong cancel culture, I couldn’t do any work for 2 years”
Sam Okyere, a Ghanaian broadcaster, expressed his opinion on Korea’s “cancel culture” and mentioned the controversy over racial discrimination in the past.
On Jan 31st, a video titled “What Is It Like To Be Black In South Korea?” was posted on the YouTube channel “Jubilee”.
In the video, Sam Okyere talked about Korea’s “cancel culture”.
“Cancel culture” means unfollowing and turning a blind eye on SNS if a celebrity or a public figure makes controversial actions/remarks.
Regarding this, Sam Okyere referred to the controversy over racial discrimination, “I couldn’t do any work for 2 years. Korea has a strong cancel culture. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that speaking on something that I felt like I was entitled to speak on would get me canceled so hard.”
Sam Okyere added, “Literally, when I made the post about blackface, it became a topic overnight. I couldn’t do any work. Like, they canceled me hard.”
One of the cast members asked, “But here’s what gets me, is that you had been talking about racism before in Korea. So what do you think made this last time different?”
Sam Okyere explained, “When your platform gets bigger, right, you have more responsibility. And so what you say really affects a lot of people, right? And I’m sure at a certain point, they’re like ‘Oh, this is Sam, the Black guy in Korea who’s doing entertainment’, right? I’m always talking good about Korea. But the one time that I said something that was perceived as negative, they were like, ‘Nah, you can’t do that.’ They X’d me out hard, to the point where my own Korean friends that supported me were getting attacked.”
Model Han Hyun Min shared, “I feel like to be a public figure in Korea means that you really have to watch out for a lot of things. I’m super careful with my social media, which kind of keeps me away from using it personally.” Hearing this, Sam Okyere said, “When you go up the ladder, it takes place slowly, but going down takes place quite fast.”
In the subsequent interview, Sam Okyere recalled, “In August 2020, I experienced cancel culture. People kept sending me a post about a group of students that did cosplay but they painted their faces black. I went on Instagram talking about how disappointed I was. But somehow things blew up. And the hate that poured in was so overwhelming. I did not know what to expect.”
Meanwhile, in 2020, Sam Okyere accused high school students of being racist after they did a parody of a viral coffin dance by black people while wearing brown makeup. However, Korean netizens pointed out that the broadcaster himself made racist gestures directed towards Asians, noticeably the “slanted eye”.
Source: daum
