China: Ongoing online ‘jihad’ against Korean pop fans

An online ‘jihad’ reached its peak Wednesday night with massive numbers of World of Warcraft players (“wowers”) swarming popular forums for fans of Korean pop boy bands on Baidu, trying to drown them in virtual noise. A Tianya post on the spam battle between the wowers and the K-pop fans has received over 100,000 views in the four hours since it was created.

Update2: Yet more on the ‘jihad’ from EastSouthWestNorth‘s Roland Soong which shows that China's ‘Red Hackers’ (Hongke) became involved in attacks that went beyond Baidu to include the targeting of Korean websites and more.

It all started on the morning of May 30, the day of a Super Junior (“JS?“) concert at the 2010 Expo in Shanghai; free tickets ran out sooner than anticipated and fans turned violent, leading to a stampede. Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth blogged the incident at the time with a translation from the Apple Daily newspaper:

According to information, the Korean Pavilion was supposed to distribute free tickets in the morning, midday and early evening. Almost 500 female fans were already waiting in the Shangnan Road entrance, many of them traveling from outside Shanghai. At 9:30am, the World Park opened and they sped through the process as quickly as they can. “Everybody sprinted towards the South Gate!” Although a large number of armed policemen were ready in the form of a human chain, the fans surged forward like a tidal wave, screaming and shrieking along the way. The armed police line could not hold them back, and reinforcements had to be called in repeatedly. Spectators exclaimed, “Heavens! This is horrifying!”
[…]
According to information, as the passion soared, the crowd surged forward. A second-floor railing broke and a young woman fell down and died. The crowd panicked and a stampede resulted. According to information, more than 100 persons were injured. According to Internet users who witnessed the scene, “the scene was chaotic, people were crying loudly and shoes were scattered all over the ground.” The ambulance sirens were heard continuously in Area A.

The ‘jihad’, as wowers are calling it, seems to have been sparked by embarrassment arising from the Super Junior show incident and has a strongly xenophobic message, but is also part of an ongoing feud between the two tribes. Indie blogger and [update: apparent] ‘jihad’ supporter Xiao Bai tells it this way:

韩国馆方30日在世博会文化中心派发5000张免费门票,凭世博会门票免费兑换,这是引发追星族疯狂的原因。日媒视频可见民众疯狂。
然而实际派发的门票只有2000张,大批疯狂女粉丝为抢票,疯狂向前冲挤。志愿者被挤散,在场的武警围成人墙,以防因人群过度拥挤发生踩踏。抢不到票的粉丝不但高呼口号,向在场武警发泄,甚至冲入世博官员办公室大吵大闹,坚称免费门票被官员拿走,誓要世博局作出交代,情况混乱。

On May 30, the Korean Pavilion issued 5,000 free entry tickets at the the Shanghai Expo Cultural Center, this was the reason the groupies went crazy. In Japanese media footage, you can see how crazy the crowd was.

In the end, only 2,000 tickets were given out, leading to a lot of crazy female fans to crazily rush forward in hopes of snatching a ticket. Volunteers got squeezed out, and armed police at the scene formed a human wall to stop the crowd and keep anyone from getting trampled. Fans who couldn't snatch any tickets began shouting slogans and venting at the armed police, even rushing into the offices of Expo officials to make a fuss, insisting that the free tickets had been given to officials and demanding the Expo administration make amends. It was a big mess.

现场回放:

为抢票棒粉辱骂殴打组成人墙的武警,向他们吐口水;一女粉甩手打了武警一耳光,被他反手压制在地,奋声高呼武警打人,一群棒粉蜂拥而上拳打脚踢;因为不能通过武警铸成的人墙,一个女生把上衣一脱,大声高喊:武警强奸我!棒粉被挤倒,武警伸手去扶,立马被人潮践踏在地,还拼命将她护住。
——说歪曲事实,你敢说没对武警动手骂人吐口水?去现场的不都是棒粉好不好?

Back to the scene:

In hopes of getting their hands on a ticket, the K-fans began hurling invective at and assaulting the armed police who had formed a human wall, even spitting on them. One female fan who lashed out and smacked an armed police had her arm grabbed back by him and pushed to the ground. Someone shouted that the armed police were beating people and then a group of K-fans swarmed, pushing and kicking. Because she couldn't break through the human wall of armed police, one woman whipped off her shirt and in a loud voice screamed: an armed police raped me! One K-fan got knocked to the ground and an armed police reached out to help her back up, but she immediately got trampled on the ground, then armed police rushed to protect her.

——To those who say I'm distorting the facts, do you dare say you didn't hit or spit on any armed police? Not everyone at the scene was a K-fan, alright?!

棒粉虽然脑残,但韩国馆难辞其咎。明明只派发2000张门票,却对外宣布5000张。他们初衷是什么不得而知,但之前某问题缠身的韩国演艺公司为凸显人气,演唱会放出的门票比外宣的少很多,为抢票粉丝们陷入混乱状态,以此造成人气爆棚的印象。
但是他们没想到事情会这样严重,事故发生后,韩国馆做无辜状,将所有责任推给世博会和FANS。

Braindead as the K-fans are, the Korean Pavilion has to take the blame. Clearly only 2,000 tickets were given out, despite that it was promoted that there would be 5,000. What their intention was remains to be seen, but the Korean entertainment company, already entangled with other problems, in order to push up numbers, handed out far fewer tickets to the concert than they had advertised, throwing the ticket-seeking fans into chaos, thereby creating the impression that the show was sold out. But they didn't anticipate that things would get this serious, and after the incident, the Korean Pavilion made like it was innocent and placed all the blame on the Expo and those fans.

馆内SJ某成员痛哭流涕道,愿自己给粉丝掏钱买票(不是说票是免费的吗?),让武警放进一批来。这如此加激化了原本混乱的状态,其他地方的棒粉疯狂向这边涌来。

One member of Super Junior inside the pavilion started crying and said he'd be willing to buy tickets for the fans himself (but weren't they already free?), and had the armed police let a bunch come in. This only aggravated an already chaotic situation, and K-fans from other places rushed madly over.

并不是所谓”孩子“,NC也许并没有年龄限制。

图中的武警DD,看肩章也就是刚入伍的小孩儿啊,不过17、8岁。

很多武警受伤严重,这次执勤的武警很多是刚刚从东突战场上下来的,真刀真枪练过,要是真放开手脚,你想一想……亏得是子弟兵,打不还手,骂不还口。

So they weren't all “kids”; braindead, it seems, has no age limit.

The little armed police brothers in the photo, from the badges on their shoulders you can see that they were freshly enlisted, no more than 17 or 18 years old.

Many armed police were quite severely hurt, and many of those deployed there were just back from the battlefield in East Turkistan, trained using real knives and real guns, so if they had been given free reign, just think about that for a minute…luckily this is the army and they don't hit or curse back.

组成人墙严阵以待的武警战士

Having formed a human wall, the armed police soldiers stood by

我不明白都挤成这样了,政府还在粉饰太平,现场已经形成了踩踏事故。究竟有没有死人,到现在依然没有定论,但是普遍流传出来的消息:多名武警受伤,11名武警重伤

I just don't understand why they would crowd in like that. The government is making it sound like nothing happened, but people in fact did get trampled at the scene. As for whether or not anyone died, there's still no definitive answer, but the main story going around is that many armed police were hurt and eleven sustained serious injury.

丢人啊……这一幕已经被多个国家记录并传发到世界各处,当时各国的摄像镜头就闪个不停啊。
日媒对此表示担忧,韩媒称中国粉丝素质太低下。

So embarrassing…this spectacle was already been recorded and shown all over the world. Cameras from every country were flashing nonstop when this happened. Japanese media have expressed great concern over this, and Korean media are saying the quality of character of Chinese fans is too low.

这些武警都是十七八岁的大男孩,甚至比这些棒粉都小很多,身板虽然挺直,但并一定虎背熊腰,怎么抵得住这样的凶猛。
同样是十几岁,看看你们在做什么,人家在做什么?——那个我错了,这些棒粉们其实年纪都挺大了,巨婴啊
丢人啊……这一幕已经被多个国家记录并传发到世界各处,当时各国的摄像镜头就闪个不停啊

These armed police were all just 17-18 year old boys, far younger than these K-fans. They may stand up nice and straight, but don't let appearances fool you, if push came to shove, faced as they were with such ferocity. And you, you're the same age, look at what you're doing, and look at what they're doing. Sorry, my mistake, in fact these K-fans are actually quite up there in age, they're just giant babies, that's all.
So embarrassing…..this spectacle has already been recorded and shown all over the world. Cameras from every country were flashing nonstop…

棒子粉丝都给我滚进来,你们丢中国人的脸你们就都不是中国人,都给我滚出中国!!你们凭什么在武警脸上吐口水!!!那些韩星是你爹妈吗???生你养你了吗??我鄙视你们,瞧不起你们,滚出中国!!!!

一下是各网友对6.9的态度!!

…………圣战继续!!!

You kook-fans rushing went in, when you make China lose face like that, you're not even Chinese anymore. Get out of my China!! Who do you think you are spitting in the face of armed police?!! Do you belong to those Korean celebrities??? Did they give birth to you and raise you?? You're so despicable, I sneer at all of you, get out of China!!!!

Below are netizens’ views of the June 9 jihad!!

………..Let the jihad continue!!!

‘The June 9 Jihad’

From Sina.com blogger yuanzhang1987's May 31 post we get an idea of how this jihad began:

现在wow吧圣战仍在继续,7点的时候,爆了SJ吧。据说爆吧速度是一分钟40页,可惜我没看见。杯具,我本来以为爆吧是8点开始的。谁知道wower7点就开始行动了。当然,我不是爆吧的主力,我只是围观的。

至于为什么要爆SJ吧,这就要从昨天晚上的世博会开始说起了。
[…]
这就是昨天晚上发生的大概情况,早上有人在wow吧发了帖子,然后激起了wower的愤怒。于是,就像当年对仙后一样,wower觉得需要我们的时候到了,于是,圣战自然就来了。

7点钟,wower开始爆SJ吧,好像很快就搞定,SJ吧开了无敌。然后8点钟,wower开始各个击破,去爆sj成员吧,金希澈、金基范、李东海等吧纷纷被爆,都开起了无敌。

事情就是这样,很简单,wow吧又一次的圣战以胜利而告终。不过,却没有当年爆仙后吧的那种快感,现在很多韩流的fans应该都喜欢已经被爆了吧,看他们从容地申请会员发帖就知道了。

The WoW forum jihad is still going on at this time. At 7pm, it exploded onto the Super Junior forum. From what I hear, the Super Junior forum was being spammed at 40 pages/minute, it's too bad I missed it. Cup, I thought the forum blast was supposed to begin at 8pm. Who knew the wowers started to move at 7. Of course, I'm not one of them, I was just going as a spectator.

As for why they blasted the Super Junior forum, that goes back to what happened last night at the Shanghai Expo
[…]
That's more or less what happened last night. This morning, someone posted a thread on the WoW forum, which enraged the wowers. Just like back with what happened with Cassiopeia, wowers show up when they feel they are needed, and now, another jihad has begun.

At 7, wowers started to blast the Super Junior forum, and it seems it didn't take long, the floodgates were open. By 8, wowers had started launching attacks of every sort, blasting forums for all the different Super Junior members, Heechul, Kibum, Donghae and others, full-on.

So that's how it went, pretty simple really, another WoW forum jihad which ended in victory. Although, there wasn't as much of a rush as when we blasted Cassiopeia, all the forums the Korean pop music fans like have pretty much been blasted by now, no wonder given how lax it is to apply for membership and get posting privileges.

As for the Cassiopeia attack, according to this Q&A post on Baidu, the WoW player ‘jihad’ against Korean boy bands and their fans began following an incident with a pregnant stalker of TVXQ in 2008. A similar post at another site suggests that after wowers showed up in person to protest outside a TVXQ concert at the Beijing Workers Stadium last summer, Cassiopeia members mobilized their own blast attack against the World of Warcraft forum on Baidu.

Update1: More on this from Roland Soong at EastSouthWestNorth: The 69 Crusade/Jihad

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