Election of South Korea 2025: Lee Jae-Myung faces Kim Moon-Soo in the presidential race
Ex-leader Yoon “has spoiled relationships between China and Korea”Posted at 10:34 am British Summer Time
Yvette Tan and Juna Moon
Seoul reports
A panel seen suspended from a building in the fashionable city center of Anguk
It is common during the electoral season in South Korea to see trucks drive around the candidates around the face and raise their campaign promises.
But a particular truck generated controversy after many slogans of the online Democratic Party (DP) are many slogans in Chinese.
Haine comments quickly spread online, accusing the DP – a party that was considered to pursue more friendly relations with China – to be Chinese spies.
The anti-Chinese feeling has intensified in the far right circles of South Korea, fueled by the repeated claims of the former president of Yoon Suk Yeol of Chinese foreign interference in the elections.
“Unlike previous administrations, which have at least requested a certain level of equilibrium, this government continued an openly pro-American diplomatic approach, which, I think, led to the deterioration of Korean-Chinese relations,” said Professor Ji Byung-Geun of the University of Chosun.
In Anguk, a popular tourist place in downtown Seoul, a sign saying that South Korea was the “next Hong Kong” could also be seen.
A Chinese woman told the BBC that she had seen online comments asking those of China to “return home” – although she added that she had never known any hostility in real life. The BBC spoke to dozens of Chinese living in Seoul who also said that there was occasional online hostility, but almost never offline.
A Chinese business owner in the fifties, who refused to be appointed, said that former chef Yoon “wasted relations between China and South Korea”.
He said that he hoped that the next presidential candidate would take measures to remedy it, stressing that he was “important for China and South Korea to get along”.
