SOUTH KOREA: What began as a tiff over how South Korean fans behaved at a concert in Malaysia in late January has evolved into a war of words that shows no signs of abating.
Three weeks in, the fight is still ongoing and appears to have intensified.
In one corner is Malaysia, joined by other countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand and Indonesia, and on some platforms, also the Philippines and Vietnam. Netizens from these countries have taken to calling themselves “SEAblings.”
In the other is South Korea, all on its own.
How it all began
On January 31, Day6, a band from Korea, held a concert in Kuala Lumpur. Concertgoers were specifically told not to bring large cameras with telephoto lenses. However, some fans from South Korea ignored this and brought and used their large cameras anyway.
This upset some Malaysian fans, who took to X to air their feelings, and South Korean fans argued back. They accused Southeast Asians of being overly dependent on K-pop, as they have no musical identity of their own.
This incensed Indonesian X users, who jumped into the fray. They argued that not every Southeast Asian is a K-pop super-fan and mentioned local group No Na, which has more of an R&B or pop flavour, combined with traditional elements.
Things escalated when Korean X users mocked a music video from No Na that was set in a rice field, as this allegedly showed how backward Southeast Asians are. This further angered Malaysian, Indonesian, Thai, Filipino, and Vietnamese X users, for whom rice fields are an important part of their culture.
The clash further intensified and took an ugly racial turn when a Korean fan, perhaps feeling that they were being ganged up on, even compared the appearance of Southeast Asian women to orangutans.
Southeast Asians fought back by pointing out how dependent South Koreans are on plastic surgery.
The clash has spawned not only angry and insulting posts but also memes and TikTok videos by the dozen, some of which have gotten millions of views, like the one below.
@isawkwardguy 2026 and we’re still doing this, embarrassing #southkorea #malaysian #malaysiantiktok #kpop #korean
And when some Korean fans tried to drag Singapore into the fray, Singaporean netizens showed they were on the side of their SEAblings.
Whether the word war and boycott will last much longer or will fizzle out like others before it remains to be seen, but as for now, the #SEAblings hashtag has remained popular on X and Threads, and shots are still fired back and forth. /TISG
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