HONG KONG – When six of the eight victims of this week’s shootings in the Atlanta area spas were confirmed to be descendants of Asians, the news reopened distressing debates in the United States about anti-Asian violence, intolerance and misogyny.
In East Asia itself, public conversations about violence took place with much less intensity.
The South Korean consulate in Atlanta said that four of the people who died in the attacks on three massage parlors on Tuesday were of Korean descent. The other two descendants of Asians are believed to be descendants of Chinese.
In both countries, which have low rates of violent crime and strict prohibition on firearms, the murders were shocking, but not surprising, given the frequent reports of armed violence and racially motivated crimes in the United States.
In South Korea, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday that the government was paying close attention to the situation in Georgia, “with great interest in the safety of South Koreans living abroad”.
South Korean broadcasters also broadcast segments of their correspondents in the United States, describing how Koreans in the Atlanta area were concerned about their safety. And some initial revelations about the victims were reported by Korean media.
On social media, some users in South Korea have expressed concern about friends or relatives in the United States. Others tagged the posts with the hashtag #stopAsianHate.
“I am deeply saddened by the events that took place in Atlanta, Georgia, two days ago,” wrote Choi Si-won, a member of the popular K-pop group Super Junior, on Instagram. “I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I would like to use my platform and emphasize that this is a problem that needs to be addressed NOW and that ignoring it is not going to help us.”
Other South Korean users objected to the comments of a law enforcement official in Georgia, who said after the attacks – using the sniper’s own words – that the man’s actions “were not racially motivated” but were caused by “sexual dependence” .
“The police are not explaining the outcome of the investigation, but are playing the role of spokesman for the suspect,” wrote columnist Oh Byung-sang in the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. The title of the article was “Shooting in Atlanta = racial discrimination + misogyny”.
In China, a Foreign Ministry spokesman on Thursday condemned the apparent rise in anti-Asian hate incidents and accused “some politicians from the last U.S. government and some anti-China forces within the US” for spreading racism and hatred with anti-China rhetoric.
“The US side must take concrete steps to address its own problems of racism and discrimination and ensure the security and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens in the United States,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On Chinese social media platforms, some users said the attacks in Georgia were not surprising in light of longstanding discrimination against Asian Americans in the United States.
“Asians around the world must come together, stand up, take care of other people’s business and speak for others,” wrote Mia Kong, a Chinese fashion blogger.
Still, the attacks in Georgia did not generate a giant wave of conversation on local social media platforms in either country. In China, users of the Chinese Weibo platform, similar to Twitter, were generally more interested in a video of an elderly woman of Asian descent in San Francisco who beat up a man who had tried to attack her.
Some people in South Korea, China and elsewhere in Asia may be less likely to take the deaths of Georgian victims seriously because of stigma attached to massage parlors, said Madeline Y. Hsu, a professor of Asian American history. at the University of Texas at Austin.
“If these women were not working in massage parlors and there was a clearer identification of them, there could be another outcry, a feeling that ‘we must speak openly because this is clearly an attack on our people and our nation,'” , Said Professor Hsu.
The level of outrage in Asia over the plight of Asian Americans – a changing category of people representing at least 20 nationalities – generally depends on a complex web of local factors.
Stories about racially motivated armed violence and hate crimes in America often go viral in China, for example, in part because the country’s state-controlled media likes to highlight dysfunctional aspects of American society. The same is true of reports of the murders of Chinese students in the United States, where many Chinese families still wish to send their children to study.
But there is little public discussion in Asia about concepts that often dominate conversations about race in the United States, including cultural appropriation and unconscious prejudice.
Hu Zhaoying, a university student from southern China’s Hunan province, said the general lack of empathy for Atlanta’s victims in China is not surprising.
“Some people don’t know about these incidents; some people choose to ignore them after seeing them; and some people cannot empathize, ”she said.
Mike Ives reported from Hong Kong and Amy Qin from Taipei. Youmi Kim contributed reporting from Seoul, and Claire Fu contributed research from Beijing.