Anna Jiwon Park has been covering the politics at The Korea Times since the summer of 2024, when she joined the press pool for the Office of the President in Korea. Prior to that, she spent about five years reporting extensively on financial markets, regulatory authorities and the financial industry. She joined The Korea Times in 2019 after spending eight years as a broadcast journalist at Arirang TV, Korea’s leading global broadcaster, covering politics, defense and culture.
Activist warns of false, anti-Korean content spreading on RedNote
Images captured from professor and academic activist Seo Kyoung-duk's Facebook post
By Anna J. Park
Chinese social media app, Xiaohongshu — known as RedNote in English — has been flooded with unfounded anti-Korean claims, warned professor Seo Kyoung-duk, a longtime advocate of Korean culture.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the Sungshin Women’s University professor said he became aware of the issue after receiving numerous reports from netizens in the U.S. and China about the spread of anti-Korean content on the platform, which is often referred to as China’s equivalent of Instagram.
"Upon investigation, I found that many Chinese users are making absurd accusations, targeting American users by insisting that 'Korea is a thief nation.' They are essentially brainwashing American users on the platform, spreading numerous posts and videos with messages such as 'Korea is stealing Chinese culture,' 'Don't trust Korea' and 'Kimchi originally belongs to China.' The situation is quite serious," he wrote.
Seo attributed these claims to "a deep sense of inferiority among Chinese netizens, as Korean culture continues to gain global recognition."
He also warned that while Xiaohongshu has traditionally been used within China and primarily by Chinese users, the recent influx of American users raises concerns that they may be misled by these false narratives about Korean culture.
"This kind of distorted Sinocentrism from some Chinese netizens will only serve to further isolate China from the rest of the world," he said.
With the U.S. TikTok ban temporarily postponed through an executive order last month, many American TikTok users have been turning to RedNote as an alternative.
Xiaohongshu remains one of the most widely used social media platforms in China, with about 300 million monthly active users.