Korea is proud? Psychology of the generation of angry Chinese youth who are angry with BTS

In July of last year, singer Lee Hyo-ri said “How about Mao” as her stage name in MBC’s entertainment show’What Do You Do’, but was intensively attacked by Chinese netizens and eventually closed her Instagram account. A month later, BTS won the Van Fleet Award, mentioning that the Korean War was “the history of the hardships that both countries had suffered together” and suffered a similar incident.

The reason that Korean society was embarrassed at the time was that it was difficult to understand the reason why Chinese netizens were angry with “Keep courtesy toward China” or “Know the history properly.” What the hell is it that is not polite and distorted history?

The recently published “Chinese Patriotic Red Guard, Angry Youth” provides clues to our doubts. Author In-hee Kim, a research fellow at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, is a researcher who has encountered this problem locally while working in China for nearly 20 years. ‘Angry Youth’ is a term for a young generation who uses online in China to “blindly patriotic, maniacally reject foreign countries, and attack liberal intellectuals.”
What are these people in China and what do they think about Korea? On the 26th, I met the author and listened to the story. The following is a question and answer

-What is’Anger Youth’?
=If you go back to the beginning, you are the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution. Just as the Red Guards were used for Mao Zedong’s power, they are being used by the Chinese Communist Party. If the Red Guard’s ideological weapon is socialism, they are patriotism. The Red Guards attack the wealthy class, and the angry youths attack foreign countries. It is Chineseism that encompasses them. They all criticize the West and see China as the center of the world. The angry youth in particular think that the world should respect China and do what China demands. China has a great ancient civilization and is a socialist country, and the world is angry at not respecting China and not doing what it wants. Anger youths have different names for each period, but the recent’So Pink’ power was born after the 1990s and is a generation familiar with the Korean Wave. So, patriotic education and fandom culture are strangely mixed. The targets of the fandom were Xi Jinping, the nation, and the nation.

-Why did they appear
As the Red Guards appeared when the Great Leap Forward Movement failed and Mao Zedong was criticized, the birth of an angry young man appeared as the shock of the 1989 Tiananmen incident. The Communist Party later launched a strong patriotic education and movement to prevent the emergence of a critical younger generation. This is because the lack of understanding of the Communist Party’s achievements led to distrust of the Party and the Tiananmen incident. That is why the education of modern and contemporary history is important. The aim is to not forget the national value, but the students who received this education have become irrational, emotional, and extreme toward foreign countries. Emphasizing the invasion of Western imperialism, memories of the great antiquity and humiliating modernity provoked extreme anger in the minds of youth and demonized all countries except China. The Korean War is also educated as a war that saved the Korean Peninsula from the United States.

-It also shows strong aggression against Korea.
=From the 1990s to the 2000s, Korea was enthusiastic, but now I think that Korea is proud and insidious. He was baptized by Chinese culture, such as printing and medicine, but he did not admit it, but instead decorated Danoji as his own culture and put it on a World Heritage Site. Above all, China should be the center of the world, but I am uncomfortable that the Korean Wave is recognized in the global market. Japan also hates it for problems of the past, but it seems that they hate Korea more recently. He is also angry about his support for protests in Hong Kong. Although the attitudes of ordinary Chinese people on the Internet are somewhat different, sometimes I was attacked as’the people who took the Danoje’ at the same conference held in China. Even if you don’t express it on the outside, you have a strong sentiment of’Korea = Dependency’.

-Looking back at Korea, where the’K’ craze is blowing, the angry youth was not like someone else’s job.
With the development of the Internet, emotions worsened as the Chinese learned that Korean pseudo-historians advertised in a way that “all ancient civilizations in China were made by the Dongyi” and “Confucius and Chioudo Koreans”. In that regard, there is a point that we also gave an excuse. Whether in Korea or China, there are points to look at in a cool and rational way. There is a misunderstanding. From my experience,’pao chai’ (泡菜) in China refers to Korean kimchi. It is also a derogatory title for Koreans. Danoje is a holiday in honor of Guyuan, a famous poet during the Cho Dynasty in China. However, in China, it was considered that Korea was taking Qu Yuan. A Chinese professor, who informed the Chinese media of the news of World Heritage registration, also informed the Chinese media with the intent of “we must cherish traditional culture like Korea,” but the media said that “Korea intercepted it” and wrote an article. Indeed, the Goguryeo issue is of little interest in China.

-How do you see angry youth in China?
= Until 2010, many books criticized China as’pathological patriotism’. Famous columnists such as Liao Baiping strongly criticized “Accu’s mental victory” and “an emotional animal that has no head and thinks only anti-American and anti-Japanese forever.” In addition, prominent figures in China, such as Wu Jia-Shang and Leshan, criticized him as “a bum who bullies with patriotism”. However, their voices are rapidly losing power as national pressures intensify after the Xi Jinping regime. Honestly, Chinese researchers, including myself, who have encountered China since the 1990s, are very embarrassed. He often sighs, “It’s not the China we knew.”

-How can this problem be improved?
=It doesn’t seem easy. The key is to change the Chinese authorities. The way the Chinese government treats foreign countries is very aggressive and exclusive. Today’s younger generation in China is the one who has been instilling patriotic thoughts since kindergarten. No matter how much internal problems, such as the gap between the rich and the poor, emerge, the country follows the direction of the country as it is.
Reporter Yoo Seong-woon [email protected]