Current Affairs

Hashtag '#cancelkorea' The Issue of Racism

Richard Lapinao
By Richard Lapinao
#cancelkorea the issue of racism

"Racism and discrimination have been used as powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and war, and even during economic downturns." Global Issues 

In recent days #cancelkorea had been trending on Twitter it all started with a Tiktok video by Bella Poarch, a Filipino American, and a Tiktok star. In her TikTok video, Korean viewers noticed a tattoo symbol (The Rising Sun) on her arm, which has a profound meaning to the Koreans and which Bella did not know the meaning. According to Dailymail.com, The flag (Rising Sun Symbol) is used in Korea as a reminder of Japanese colonialism when Japan ruled with force, sending Korean men to battle, using tens of thousands of young women as Comfort Women, AKA sex slaves. The Rising Sun is said to be a symbol of oppression and slaughter. The symbol was used before and during World War II by Imperial Japan's military, particularly the Imperial Japanese Navy. It was used as propaganda, championing the culture of war. 

Bella Poarch immediately apologized to Koreans about her Tiktok video, she said in a Tiktok post "I will have the tattoo removed or do cover up. I did not know the history behind this tattoo and I will educate others about it." But the conflict did not end there, On September 9, 2020, with the ongoing exchange of conflicts, a comment emerged saying that Filipinos are non-educated people, poor country, and short people. The video clip also surfaced showing the "racist" attitude of a Korean actress where they laughed and "mimic" the Filipinos English speaking accent, with that, #cancelkorea started exploding on Twitter and has been trending for a few days. 
Here are some of the tweets;

Night after the two-day trending September 10, 2020, when the new hashtag #SorryToFilipinos trended in Korea and in the Philippines. It seems that the Twitter "keyboard warriors" realize peace.


OPINION


Racism is a serious social problem which is present anywhere in the world, maybe we can not stop it, we can still say something that we do not like to others. But isn't it better if we don't hurt others? discrimination may be preset and natural to a people (no one is perfect) that's how the world teaches us. But we need to break that stereotyping change starts with me (with you) we need to broaden our scale of social understanding educate ourselves selves to the culture, to a person's color, a religion, and to a group where he/she belongs to. All we need is to accept and respect one another.

1. Don't do unto others what you don't want others to do to you.
2. Don't generalize issues to a group of people
3. Be sensitive with other feelings

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References & Credits: all credits to the Twitter owner 
Image snipped from https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/
global Issues | globalisues.org
dailymail.com

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