Weibo account @孙世曼 posted a graphic on February 10 saying that a Chinese student was smoking downstairs at home on the evening of February 9 and was beaten by two Koreans because they heard that he was Chinese.
During the assault, the student’s head was directly hit against the wall, and his head was swollen, and verbal threats were made. The incident took place in Busan, a coastal city in southeastern Korea.
The direct attack by two Koreans on Chinese students in South Korea is a prominent reflection of the recent rise in anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea. Recently, because of some minor incidents in the Beijing Winter Olympics, South Korean media and politicians have started to stir up anti-China sentiment again in a nervous manner. The first incident was the image of a Chinese Korean girl waving in Korean costume during the opening performance of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which caused strong resentment in South Korea, accusing China of cultural plundering of South Korea, and even the South Korean government took up the matter with China.
China has more than 1 million Korean people, they wear their own national costumes to participate in the opening event of the Beijing Winter Olympics is natural, but also a show of Korean culture, I do not know as the same ethnic Korean people why they are so inexplicably angry? Do Koreans think that Chinese Koreans cannot wear their own national costumes? If that’s the case, is South Korea going to scold China again for depriving the Korean people of their cultural freedom?
The second incident is that in the men’s short track speed skating 1,000m event at the Winter Olympics, two Korean athletes, including Hwang Dae-heon, were eliminated from the final due to foul play, and Chinese athlete Ren Ziwei won the event. As a result, South Korea was very unhappy with the judge’s decision and appealed to the International Skating Federation (ISF), which rejected it. At the same time, South Korea turned its grievances to China, asking the Chinese sports authorities to reflect on their own problems, with some saying that “China stole the gold medal in the 1,000m event from South Korea”, again fueling anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea.
However, the judges of the Winter Olympics come from all over the world and their decisions have nothing to do with China, they are only accountable to the rules of the competition and the International Olympic Committee, so I wonder why South Korea has directed its discontent with the judges’ decisions to resentment against China. Obviously, South Korea’s reaction to the Winter Olympics incident is unconventional and incomprehensible.
To many Chinese, South Korea’s anti-China sentiment can be characterized as “neurotic”, which makes people feel baffled. Looking deeper into the underlying reasons, it should be said that it is related to the strong self-esteem and inferiority complex of the Korean nation, which is formed by history.
As a small country surrounded by big powers, Korea’s historical memory is unpleasant. It has been a vassal state of China for a long time, colonized by Japan for decades in the modern era, and dependent on the U.S. for military protection in the modern era, and it seems that South Korea has never really become an independent country. Faced with a less-than-ideal history and reality, South Korea, which is in great need of national self-confidence, has developed a strong national pride that makes it easy for them to take any trivial matter to the next level and thus lose their calm demeanor.
The consequence of strong self-esteem is that they can only succeed, not fail; they can only praise themselves, not criticize themselves; they are extremely sensitive and arrogant, and they like to show themselves by denying others. In the end, they are all “strong” against China to highlight South Korea’s self-esteem and self-confidence by being angry with Chinese Koreans wearing Korean costumes and directing their dissatisfaction with the judges of the Winter Olympics to China. This is a true reflection of South Korea’s psychological inferiority.
Anyone who knows something about psychology knows that self-confidence brings tolerance and inferiority brings arrogance. A truly confident nation is willing to share its culture with others, has the courage to face its own failures and shortcomings, and is able to “share its beauty with other nations and the world”. It seems that the Korean nation is not yet able to achieve national self-confidence, which is one of the major problems that South Korea has to face.
In fact, by facing history and reality honestly, South Korea can develop its own national self-confidence. History is history, it is long past, and there is no need for South Korea to be bound by it. New international rules have been formed, modern Sino-Korean relations are based on equality and mutual respect, and the two countries are fully capable of developing fraternal and friendly relations of equality and mutual benefit. The Chinese Embassy in South Korea congratulated Hwang Dae-heon for winning the men’s short track speed skating 1,500m event, demonstrating the expectation of developing friendly relations between China and South Korea.
Moreover, South Korea has been developing very successfully in the last 50-60 years and has become the tenth largest economy in the world, one of the few developed countries in Asia, and its GDP per capita is expected to surpass that of Japan in the coming years. Faced with such proud development achievements, South Korea should have every reason to develop real confidence in its own nation. China welcomes the participation of a confident and strong South Korea in East Asian and international affairs, which will be beneficial to both South Korea and the world. Source