Last week, while scrolling through X, I came across a striking exchange between Turkish and South Korean users I had never heard of. Insults, national stereotypes and personal attacks were flying in both directions. What caught my attention was not simply the ugliness of the argument, but the fact that Turks and Koreans were involved in it.
Türkiye and South Korea have long enjoyed unusually warm relations. The memory of Turkish soldiers who fought in the Korean War still occupies an important place in the relationship, and Turkish officials have long described the bond as one of friendship and even “blood brotherhood.” That made the spectacle on X all the more puzzling.
The dispute had begun with an apparently innocuous Turkish post about South Korean actress Kim Go-eun. A Turkish user described her as “the most beautiful Korean who really looks Korean.” As the post spread among Korean users, the wording was interpreted as stereotyping what a “real” Korean should look like. What might have remained a semantic misunderstanding quickly escalated into insults about appearance, economic status and even the Korean War. The original poster later said the remark had been misunderstood and was intended as a compliment. By Aug.12, Turkish media were reporting what had become an online “Korea-Türkiye fight.”
