The Observer's Web Mindset

The picture shows the streets of Seoul, South Korea

"Seoul is definitely not a perfect city, but it sews people's feelings into the details, which makes you scold garbage sorting for being annoying, but silently miss its order and gentleness. In the end, I am willing to suffer from Seoul disease, because this warm urban disease doesn't want to be cured at all, okay?"

Are you a little confused when you read this passage? What is "Seoul disease"? Why did you get this disease?

On September 16, KBS, one of the three major TV stations in South Korea, broadcasted a news about "Seoul disease". The host said in the show that it was a "disease" popular among young people in China, referring to returning home after traveling to South Korea, still remembering Seoul, so that it feels like having a serious mental illness.

Screenshot of KBS's video report on "Seoul disease"

To prove that ¡°Seoul Disease¡± really exists, the show also broadcasts a few short videos of ¡°Seoul Disease¡± produced and uploaded by Chinese netizens: a selfie of a Chinese woman crying sadly at the airport in Linzhawa because she was about to leave Korea, accompanied by a sad background music and a short video of the Seoul night scene.

Three days later, the remaining two of the three major TV stations in South Korea, MBC and SBS, quickly followed up and ¡°Seoul disease¡± among young people in China. Instead of KBS directly linking ¡°Seoul disease¡± to Chinese tourism enthusiasm, MBC believes it is a culture-induced Korean tourism stream. Any clip of a Korean tour, whether eating, drinking or viewing landscapes, can be recorded by enthusiastic Chinese tourists with their mobile phones and then shared on the Internet as a glorious capital.

While SBS has chosen to take the edge of sword and further expand the interpretation of ¡°Seoul disease¡±, it has for the first time included Chinese tourists and Chinese international students in the ¡°Seoul disease¡± disease category. The report believes that the daily lives of these Chinese after returning from South Korea are too flat and empty, ¡°Seoul disease¡± has gone beyond the mere tourism aftermath and contains their vision of Korean society and culture full of idealism.

After that, the South Korean media began to collectively follow up and massive broadcasting of "Seoul disease", saying that "Seoul disease" is very popular among young people in China. Just on September 29, South Korea imposed visa-free entry on Chinese groups of tourists, and just met the 11th National Day holiday, the media is expected to increase the number of Chinese citizens to travel to Korea. This wave of hype was originally made to boost the South Korean tourism industry, only under the Korean media's usual oil addiction, gradually evolved into the argument " Chinese young people love South Korea everything from culture to society."

In this context, the reporting direction of "Seoul disease" has gradually deviated from the original intention of the Korean tourism industry, and has begun to distort the foreign proclamation of Korean media to promote Korean culture.

In a program called "Evening Special", South Korean education broadcaster EBS advertised to the world in English, "Seoul disease" spread across China, Chinese tourists from Seoul returned, under the propulsion of Korean pop music and Korean culture, the love of South Korea has evolved from ordinary tourism to an in-depth emotional experience, and said the word "Seoul disease" has become the hotter of the Chinese Internet.

EBS reports video footage of "Seoul disease"

To conclude first, "Seoul disease" is not a self-made word for the Korean media, it does exist on the Chinese Internet, but the true meaning, scope and context of use of Korean media reports are different.

The earliest users of the word "Seoul disease" are some Korean pop culture lovers, who have a certain yearning for Korea because they like Korean TV dramas and star idols. Pilgrimages to TV drama locations in Seoul, South Korea, listening to live concerts or punching in street shops once visited by stars are a way for them to chase stars, expecting some kind of emotional connection with idols. This phenomenon is very common, and it is not a special case for South Korea. For example, when animation lovers visit Japan, they will also arrange for themselves to visit the original painting location and tour of Akihabara.

In recent years, with the continuous development of social networks, a part of Korean pop culture enthusiasts returned to travel and will share their travel experiences in Korea with others on their social accounts. Through the connection created by the same geographical space where the idols are located, a sense of nothingness flows into their hearts, urgently in need of lyricism. The so-called ¡°Seoul disease¡± was created so that it pointed to the intense emotional dependence on fans and idols, not tourists and tourist cities. Therefore, the early Chinese Internet ¡°Seoul disease¡± small video, mostly taken by netizens to travel in Korea, the scope of dissemination is very limited, and belongs to the small circle of self-enjoyment.

Several other types of ¡°Seoul disease¡± videos have appeared later on, such as expressing an unprecedented sense of selfishness and happiness on the streets of Seoul. In essence, this feeling is still the ¡°death effect¡± under the idol filter, because of the liking of an idol, so even carrying the city he has lived in. Meanwhile, some over-blaming Korean society-developed student intermediaries and MCN accounts also joined, who did not understand the source of emotion behind ¡°Seoul disease¡± and just to get more exposure, had the label ¡°Seoul disease¡± ¨C this part of the video was carefully challenged by Korean media as a proof of promoting young Chinese people love Korea.

Standard "Seoul Disease" Video, Swing in Hanjiang Park

"Seoul's Disease"'s real red starts with a short video of a turbulent autumn, where the creator uploaded a video of himself playing Soda's autumn in Seoul's Hangzhou Park in South Korea, featuring very sensual background music and labeled "Seoul's Disease".

As the effects of the video showed were too incitative, after the circle was broken and red, many people were purely sick and murmured, and quickly caused a lot of trouble. Netizens actively uploaded various kinds of turmoil videos, using the same sad music and labeling " Seoul disease " tags, such as in Shenzhen's Park turmoil is " Seoul disease ", massage master hanging up to the customer's back is " Seoul disease ", a pot of powder from the chopsticks is also " Seoul disease ".

The "Seoul Disease" video, mostly this kind of funny creation.

To say a little bit out of the subject, Korean pop culture enthusiasts have tried to defend the purity of the word "Seoul disease", thinking that these are the disclosures of their own true feelings, should not be taken by others as a trick of ridicule. but the long-standing in the opposition state of the mainland pop culture enthusiasts are in response, in the past allowed you a pair of high-rise appearance, play in my idol, now does not allow me to play in your idol patterns, it is a double goal.

Both sides have often fought a battle for this under posts and videos labeled "Seoul disease".But with the influx of a large number of passers, at present, the word "Seoul disease" has basically been characterized on the Chinese Internet as an unhealthy murmuring expression, used to express the ridicule of admiring outsiders.

Historically, this combination of words "land name + disease", probably the most famous "Paris syndrome", has been discovered by psychologists to describe the tourists' romantic fantasies of the tourist sites and the actual tourist feelings completely inconsistent with the strong sense of falling down. Most seen among Japanese tourists in the 70s and 80s of the last century, the Japanese media at the time did not hesitate to describe Paris as the romantic capital of France, and as a result, Japanese tourists discovered that it was not so after the field tourism, the hygiene of Paris was poor, infrastructure aged, theft cases were frequent, and therefore a strong psychological shadow.

South Korean media reports about "Seoul disease" returned to the Chinese Internet, and soon caused more questions. There are netizens who feel sorry, this kind of trouble can also be published in the news, replied by others because South Korea has nothing to report. There are netizens joking, in fact, "Seoul disease" is because after discovering Seoul too broken, feeling that money is wasted.

There are also netizens who directly say that Qingdao, Smoke Tower, Weihai and Seoul in the same latitude, the environment, the climate, are not bad, there are many Korean enterprises, even Seoul climbing, in Qingdao can recur, to go to Korea to play is a simple tour, there is no need to impose so many filters.

Chinese netizens in South Korean media report " Seoul disease " news under front row comments

On September 26, my country's embassy issued a safety reminder for travel to South Korea, which clearly mentioned that demonstrations against China occur from time to time in many places in South Korea, reminding China tourists to remain highly vigilant and enhance their awareness of self-protection.

Instead of creating the illusion that China loves Korean culture and is beneficial to Korean tourism in public opinion, if the Korean media really want to boost the Korean economy, it is better to do some practical work for Chinese tourists to travel to Korea in a down-to-earth manner. The simplest way is to start by reducing anti-China reports and exaggerating extreme nationalist sentiments.