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1 week ago | 
malaysia.news.yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
Hailey JO / AFP South Korea30 May 2025 at 3:00 am·3-min readAhead of South Korea's snap election to replace impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol, social media users shared an altered image of conservative former Daegu mayor Hong Joon-pyo sporting a jacket with a slogan backing the rival camp's Lee Jae-myung. The original photo shows no name or political message on his outfit. "Mr. Hong Joon-pyo, I'm disappointed.
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1 week ago | 
yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
Stamping ballots with personal name seals renders them invalid, South Korean election authorities warn, contrary to online posts that doing so protects against vote rigging. The country's upcoming presidential vote has been marred with baseless voter fraud claims amplified by ousted leader Yoon Suk Yeol during his failed martial law declaration.
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2 weeks ago | 
yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
With two weeks left to South Korea's presidential election, social media users widely shared a video by a right-wing YouTuber falsely claiming the US Department of Defense had endorsed conservative candidate Kim Moon-soo. In fact, the YouTuber had misrepresented remarks from US Forces Korea commander General Xavier Brunson during an interview discussing the region's geopolitical situation. A US official told AFP the claim is "completely untrue".
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3 weeks ago | 
yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
Ahead of snap polls in South Korea triggered by the impeachment of ex-leader Yoon Suk Yeol, social media users falsely claimed anyone could register to vote from abroad with just an email address. Email validation is just a preliminary step of registration and overseas voters without a valid South Korean identification number must provide other documents to verify their nationality.
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1 month ago | 
yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
After South Korea's Constitutional Court formally removed former president Yoon Suk Yeol from office over his short-lived imposition of martial law, points from a purported BBC "commentary" accusing judges of being corrupt and sympathetic to the North resurfaced online. But the content does not appear on the British broadcaster's website, and the outlet confirmed to AFP it is fabricated.
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1 month ago | 
yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
"As expected, the Democratic Party and the Chinese are in cahoots," reads an April 7 post on a South Korean online forum Nate Pann. "It gives me the chills," the post goes on to say. "The Chinese say they protected our country's freedom. This is insane."It features an image showing a simplified Chinese-language poster alongside a partial Korean translation that reads: "The Constitutional Court has upheld Mr. Yoon's impeachment.
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1 month ago | 
malaysia.news.yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
Hailey JO / AFP South Korea9 April 2025 at 11:07 pm·4-min readUsing AirPods is not akin to "wearing a mini microwave" next to the brain, engineering professors told AFP, branding such claims circulating online as nonsensical. While Apple's wireless earbuds emit similar frequencies to microwave ovens, they do so at significantly lower power levels, experts said. "AirPods = Baking your brain in a mini microwave oven," reads the Korean-language caption of an X video posted on March 3, 2025.
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2 months ago | 
yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
As South Korea grappled with multiple wildfires in March 2025, images were shared in social media posts that falsely claimed they showed firefighters exhausted from containing the blazes. The images are inconsistent with photos taken of firefighters during the unprecedented wildfires in the country’s southeast, and contain visual artefacts that an expert told AFP are signs of AI generation.
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2 months ago | 
malaysia.news.yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
Hailey JO / AFP South Korea30 March 2025 at 7:57 pm·3-min readAs South Korea battled unprecedented wildfires that ravaged large areas of the country's southeast in March 2025, a video was shared in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed a Chinese woman starting one of the deadly blazes. The video has in fact circulated since October 2022 in reports about a woman being arrested on suspicion of arson at an ecopark in Busan.
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2 months ago | 
yahoo.com | Hailey Jo
As deadly wildfires raged across South Korea's southeast, social media posts shared a fabricated news report alongside unsubstantiated claims that one of the blazes was deliberately started by a Chinese exchange student. The purported screenshot was created by combining two authentic but unrelated articles from the Herald Business newspaper. A screenshot of the supposed news report spread March 24, 2025 on Facebook as multiple wildfires burned in South Korea's southeast (archived link).
