Children make handprint Taegukgi flags at an event marking the 81st anniversary of Liberation Day at the Daebaek Intervill apartment complex in Buk-gu, Daegu, on Thursday, two days before Liberation Day. [Yonhap]
Children make handprint Taegukgi flags at an event marking the 81st anniversary of Liberation Day at the Daebaek Intervill apartment complex in Buk-gu, Daegu, on Thursday, two days before Liberation Day. [Yonhap]

Posts mocking and denigrating Korean independence activists have been proliferating on the social media platform Threads ahead of Liberation Day, drawing widespread criticism.

Seo Gyeong-deok, a professor at Sungshin Women's University, said Thursday that he had received numerous tips from internet users. "After checking, I found the situation is extremely serious," he said.

Posts shared by Seo depicted figures such as Kim Gu, Ahn Jung-geun and Yu Gwan-sun as criminals. Others linked independence activist Yu to pro-Japanese collaborator Lee Wan-yong in a mocking context. Some posts grouped Yun Bong-gil, Lee Bong-chang and Ahn Jung-geun together with deeply offensive slurs — expressions Seo said undermine national pride.

"There are many posts that have crossed the line," Seo said. "No matter how much freedom of expression one may have, writing like this amounts to denying historical fact."

He warned that the mockery had spread across platforms. "On Threads, independence activists are being ridiculed through text, and on TikTok through videos and photos — this must stop now," he said.

Seo urged internet users to take action, saying the most important step when encountering such harmful content is to report it actively so the posts cannot gain further exposure.

He also called on Threads to strengthen its monitoring to ensure such posts are no longer uploaded.


jshan@heraldcorp.com