RM BTS and Ningning Aespa Become Victims of South Korea-China Chaos at the Beijing Olympics

RM BTS and Ningning aespa were attacked by Chinese netizens and South Korean netizens (South Korea) respectively due to the collaborative decisions of referees at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. On Monday (7/2), RM via his Instagram Story gave encouraging support to South Korean speedkater Hwang Daeheon who is the favorite in the 1000 meter short track speed skating branch.

The BTS leader shared a video of Daeheon overtaking two Chinese skaters, Ren Ziwei and Li Wenlong. The rapper and lyricist whose real name is Kim Nam-joon did not write any comments. It only gives applause and thumbs up emojis.

 This upload came after Daeheon was disqualified by the referee which made him fail to advance to the final. Photo: Instagram @rkive This referee's decision was officially protested by the South Korean team.

While in the final, Chinese skater Ren Ziwei finally managed to win the gold medal. After RM uploaded the video, he became the target of attacks by Chinese netizens. However, because the comment column on RM's personal Instagram account was not opened, they flocked to give bad comments on BTS's official Instagram account.

Chinese netizens are busy giving emojis of people vomiting, or other bad comments in Chinese. Not only RM, Ningning aespa members from China were also targeted, but from South Korean netizens. They cut out Ningning's photocard, then uploaded a video on TikTok. "Ningning Goodbye," said the caption of one of the videos that was distributed.

They were annoyed with Ningning because the youngest member of the aespa gave her support to the Chinese athletes. In fact, Ningning gave this support before the collaborative decision was made. South Korean netizens responded to this video in various ways.

Some found it ridiculous and exaggerated, but others wrote that Ningning deserved to be treated as such. "It doesn't matter because he is jjanggae," wrote one netizen in one of the brave forums. Jjanggae is a special swear word that Koreans use for Chinese people. While the Chinese also have a similar word for Koreans, namely bangzi, which means more or less "uneducated bastard".

For a more detailed background, South Korean athlete Hwang Daeheon was disqualified during the semifinals because he thought he touched another athlete during a field race. Meanwhile, in the final, the video saw Chinese athlete Rei Ziwei's hand holding the leg of Hungarian athlete Liu Shaolin Sandor of Hungary.

However Rei was not disqualified. The South Korean team's anger became when they found out that Liu, who should have won the gold medal, was disqualified. Liu made it to the finish line in first place, but he had already been penalized twice and was shown a yellow card. This made the gold medal finally fell to Rei who was in second place.

Not only was Hwang Daeheon disqualified, another South Korean athlete, namely Lee Juneseo who is also a record holder, was also disqualified along with Daejeon. Meanwhile, another South Korean athlete, Park Hang-hyuk, suffered an injury when he faced other Chinese athletes in the quarter-finals.

As a result of this series of incidents, the South Korean team submitted an official protest to the International Skating Union and the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday (8/2). South Korea's Chef de Mission Yoon Hong-Geun also appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Citing the AP, Yoon Hong-Geun said that he received many calls asking the South Korean team to go home because there were many injustices from the organizers.

But for the sake of hard work and related teams, as well as many remaining competitions, they decided to finish the Olympics in Beijing. Relations between South Korea and China have deteriorated since 2016. The cold war between the two countries is actually related to their allies, namely China and North Korea (North Korea) on the one hand, and South Korea and the United States (US) on the other.

The conflict began with North Korea's nuclear tests carried out from 2006 to 2016, which were said to be able to prevent the threat of invasion from South Korea and the US. South Korea and the US then worked together to build a defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.

Because of this, China finally boycotted anything related to entertainment content from South Korea, from K-pop, Korean dramas, to advertisements starring South Korean artists. A handful of artists like Big Bang's G-Dragon are still well-received in China, but the activities of other artists are very limited.

BTS is a Korean artist who is not liked by the Chinese government. BTS's songs have been banned from playing on radio stations since 2016, but in December 2020, Dynamite's song was playing. In October of the same year, BTS was also attacked by Chinese netizens after RM expressed his gratitude to Korean War veterans in South Korea and the United States (US).

This statement was made after BTS received an award from the Korea Society for being considered instrumental in promoting US-South Korean relations.