Posts mistake Chinese expressway for South Korean infrastructure

This article is more than one year old.
Published on March 7, 2023 at 04:32
Updated on March 7, 2023 at 04:36
2 min read
By Kate TAN, AFP Australia

A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in Facebook and Twitter posts that falsely claim it shows a highway winding through mountains in South Korea. The footage actually shows an expressway in Guizhou in southwestern China. The same clip has previously circulated in posts falsely claiming it showed a road in Indonesia.

"South Korean Highways," reads a Facebook Reel posted on February 8.

The aerial footage shows tunnels and winding roads against a landscape of lush green mountains.

Screenshot of a Facebook reel sharing the false claim, taken on March 6, 2023.

The video has garnered nearly 300,000 views in similar posts around the world, including in Taiwan, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Iraq.

Chinese infrastructure

Reverse image searches and keyword searches on Google found the footage in a YouTube video about an expressway in China.

The caption of the YouTube video, uploaded on August 29, 2022, says that it shows the Yuqing-Anlong Expressway (Yu'an expressway) in Guizhou province in southwestern China.

This part of the Yu'an expressway, which connects the counties of Pingtang and Luodian in Guizhou, opened to the public on January 2020, China's state media CGTN reported.

The expressway includes the Pingtang Bridge, which is 2,135-metres (7,000-feet) long with a bridge tower standing 332-metres (1,090-feet) high.

Google Maps imagery of the expressway corresponds with features in the video, including a building (highlighted in blue), tunnels (highlighted in red) and a winding road after the tunnel (highlighted in yellow).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the misleading video (top) and the imagery from Google Satellite View (bottom):

A search for Yu'an expressway on the Chinese social media platform Douyin found dashcam footage from a vehicle driving along the expressway published in December 2021.

Around one minute into the video, the building (highlighted in yellow), tunnel (highlighted in red) and mountain (highlighted in blue) are all visible.

AFP previously debunked posts falsely claiming the road was located in Indonesia.

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