Video altered from 2017 footage to add references to China's World Cup qualifier defeat

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on February 17, 2022 at 11:01
  • 3 min read
  • By AFP Hong Kong
A video viewed tens of thousands of times on social media claims to show three South Korean television hosts laughing after the Chinese men's national football team lost to Vietnam in a 2022 World Cup qualifying match. This is misleading: the footage has been manipulated from a 2017 South Korean broadcast of an NBA basketball game.

This video was posted here on China's Twitter-like social media platform Weibo on February 4, 2022.

"When China's national football team lost to Vietnam, South Korean broadcasters laughed uncontrollably," reads the simplified Chinese-language title at the beginning of the clip. 

The footage -- which has been viewed more than 30,000 times -- circulated online after Vietnam rattled China in a 3-1 upset during a World Cup qualifying match on February 1, 2022.

The match result has been superimposed above the trio in the misleading video.

The post's caption reads: "It really "hurts" South Koreans to see China's football loss to Vietnam". This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the three television hosts becoming hysterical in the footage.

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Screenshot taken on February 16, 2022, of the misleading Weibo post

  

The video was also shared with a similar claim on Chinese video-sharing site Bilibili here and here, and on Twitter here and here.

While comments from some online users indicated they doubted the video was genuine, others appeared to believe the claim was true, with one user saying: "They don't even have basic respect for China".

In fact, the video has been digitally altered.

AFP found the Korean-language conversation in the misleading video does not mention China's defeat to Vietnam. 

The Chinese-language subtitles added to the clip -- which refer to the football match -- are also not accurate.

Old blooper footage

Keyword searches found an earlier clip of the broadcast -- without the Chinese-language subtitles -- was published here in a report by South Korean news site Wikitree on February 20, 2017.

The unedited clip features a logo for the South Korean television network SPOTV.

In the clip, the presenter on the right coughs several times, causing the others to laugh.

The Korean-language headline translates to English as: "NS Yoon-G cracked up. NBA All-Star broadcast blooper (video)".

NS Yoon-G is the stage name of Korean-American singer and actress Kim Yoon-ji.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the misleading posts (L) and the video embedded in the Wikitree article (R):

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Screenshot comparison of the video shared in the misleading posts (L) and the video embedded in the Wikitree article (R)

The article reads: "In the '2017 NBA All-Star Game', which was broadcasted on SPOTV on the 19th, NS Yoon-G sat in the relay seat with newscaster Kim Myung-jung and reporter Park Se-woon.

"In the video, the trio who were giving their closing remarks burst into laughter at reporter Park Se-woon's sudden cough."

The gaffe was also reported by South Korean broadcaster SPOTV here and South Korean newspaper Seoul Shinmun here in February 2017.

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