K-Drame Tempest attracts nationalist anger in China

In the Romance Spy Tempst series, Jun Ji-Hyun, one of the greatest stars in South Korea, plays a diplomat trying to discover the truth behind a deadly assassination.

“Why does China prefer war? A nuclear bomb could fall near the border,” said her character in an episode of the new Disney +series.

This fictitious scene has led to real consequences during the weekend, many Chinese social media users considering a bad malicious characterization of China as belligerent. Many are now calling for brands to break ties with the Korean actress.

The tumult has also rekindled a debate on an unofficial Chinese ban on South Korean entertainment, which has been in place for almost a decade.

Although China has never admitted a ban, the brutal shortage of K-Content since 2016 is widely considered a protest against the decision of South Korea to deploy an American anti-missile system in 2016, which China considers a threat to its military operations in the region.

Things seemed to be careful in recent months, with some South Korean artists organizing concerts in China. But the controversy on Tempest sparked a new wave of ban on the ban.

“Keep K-Drama’s ban on death, thank you,” reads a comment from Weibo loved by 10,000 users.

Although a large part of the anger has merged around Jun’s line on China, social media users have also unearthed other examples of the series they consider to be offensive.

For example, the scenes intended to portray the Chinese Dalian city present a bunch of dilapidated buildings, which would have shot in Hong Kong, which, according to some, would say China in bad light.

In another scene, a group of people is sitting at a table on a red carpet with yellow stars, which, according to social media users, resembles the Chinese flag.

When Jun recited a former Chinese poem in another case, viewers criticized what they considered his wobbly accent.

All this led to a concerted effort against Jun on Weibo, where users put pressure on the brands to punish it.

According to Weibo users with sharp eyes, the American brand for skin care, the French luxury brand Louis Vuitton and the Swiss watchmaker Piaget all rubbed Jun with their social media accounts.

“In addition to removing Jun Ji-Hyun advertisements, quickly terminating its contracts on a global scale. Otherwise, we will boycott LV forever,” reads a comment on the Weibo account of Louis Vuitton.

Jun’s agency told the Local Press MBC on Tuesday that the actress’s brand campaigns were “unrelated” to Tempest and ended before the show was released.

Chinese consumers are known to exploit their massive spending power in pressure campaigns when they perceive insults to Chinese national pride.

The brands of the Swedish fashion giant H&M with the Japanese uniqlo clothing channel and more recently Swatch – for an ad that featured an allegedly racist gesture – all found the target of such boycott campaigns.

Some people came to the defense of Jun, arguing that she was not she who wrote the controversial line.

“Jun Ji-Hyun is just an actor. It is impossible for her to understand the story of a country, the emotions of the people and the complex relationships between the countries before making a film,” wrote a Weibo user, blaming the incident on “ignorance” of the crew and writers of the show.

But such feelings have been drowned by an animated opposition. “Even a washing machine cannot whiten something as well as you,” reads a comment on the post.

“She is not a little actor. She has a choice of script, she can read the script! Who can force a popular star to do this?” Another wrote.

Jun swept to celebrity with the 2001 Rom-Com My Myysy Girl, who stormed Asia and established it as “IT Girl” for years including the years. Since then, she has found a lasting success with her roles, from the fantastic romantic series of 2013 My Love from the Star, at the Thriller Kingdom of Netflix 2021.

But like many other South Korean celebrities, it visibly lacks the Chinese entertainment scene since the 2016 ban.

Optimism had surrounded the ban earlier this year, because bilateral links seemed to warm up.

In March, the South Korea Foreign Ministry said that foreign ministers from the two countries agreed to work on the restoration of cultural exchanges. The following month, the heads of the South Korean hip-hop group became the first Complete Korean group to perform in mainland China in almost a decade.

But it is difficult to say how K-Pop and K-Dramas will be left behind in what was in the past its largest market.

In May, the group of boys K-Pop Epex was to perform in Fuzhou, in what would have been a historic concert for K-POP in China. But their program was canceled for weeks before the event, their management agency invoking “local circumstances”.

Last week, when he questioned the postponement of another concert in the province of Hainan which was to present several K-Pop groups, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lin Jian, said that China did not oppose “beneficial cultural exchanges” with South Korea.

Over the past decade, China has proven to be a juggernaut of full pop culture, capable of entertaining its population of 1.3 billion with the local media. And for many Chinese viewers, the in progress controversy surrounding Tempest gave them another reason to move away from K-Content.

“It’s already 2025 and you are still looking at K-Dramas, how sticky!” wrote a Weibo user.