Photo does not show South Korean cherry blossoms 'cut down' for being too Japanese

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 11, 2023 at 08:54
Updated on April 11, 2023 at 08:55
5 min read
By SHIM Kyu-Seok, AFP South Korea

An image of a road flanked by cherry blossoms has been shared in social media posts that falsely claim it shows trees in South Korea cut down on the orders of the country's former President Moon Jae-in for being "too Japanese". But the photo actually shows cherry blossom trees in Gyeongju, South Korea, which street view imagery showed were intact as of March 2023. A spokesperson for a government tourism organisation that manages the trees also dismissed the claim.

The claim was shared here on Facebook on March 30, 2023.

The post includes an image of a road flanked by pink-coloured trees that appear to be cherry blossoms.

"They cut down 500,000 of these cherry blossom trees aged between 40 and 50 years just because the trees originate from Japan," the Korean-language post reads.

"What kind of nastiness is this from the Moon Jae-in government? They've even targeted trees, not just people."

The caption also includes a date -- March 24, 2019 -- suggesting this was when the photo was taken, and that the trees have been removed since.

The claim was shared online after cherry blossoms across the country bloomed from late March to early April, drawing over a million visitors to various spring flower festivals.

Screenshot of the misleading claim shared on Facebook. Captured April 6, 2023.

Comments left in the misleading posts suggested several users believed the trees were genuinely removed on the orders of Moon, who was South Korea's president from 2017 to 2022.

"Lunatic, they should cut you down like you cut down these beautiful trees," wrote one user, referring to Moon.

"He's taken away even our little pleasures in life, what a lowlife," wrote another.

Relations between South Korea and Japan deteriorated under Moon's term as the two countries exchanged economic blows after a South Korean court in 2018 ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims of wartime forced labour and their families.

On March 6 Seoul announced a plan to compensate South Korean victims of forced labour in an attempt to mend the two countries frayed ties.

Identical claims were shared on Facebook here and here, as well as here on Naver Band, a South Korean forum.

The origin of the cherry blossom tree remains under dispute, with some research showing many of the trees located in popular tourist areas around South Korea belong to a variant that originates from Japan.

However, the claim is false.

Bomun Lake cherry blossoms

AFP previously fact-checked social media posts about an identical image, shared online as far back as July 2017, that falsely claimed it was captured in places such as Argentina or Japan.

But a reverse image search and comparisons with photos from a South Korean tourist blog found that the misleading photo shows a road in the tourism district around Bomun Lake in the city of Gyeongju, located in the country's southeast.

AFP further geolocated the same point through Google Maps' Street View, which showed the photo was taken on Bomun-ro, a street located in the Bomun Tourist Complex.

Screenshot comparison of image shared alongside the misleading claim on Facebook (left) and the corresponding Google Maps Street View footage (right)

While the Google Maps images were shot in April 2015, AFP was able to find footage of the same area captured on March 2023 through the street view function on Naver Maps, South Korea's largest map service.

Below is a screenshot of the Naver Maps' street view footage of the area, with the date of the footage highlighted in red:

Screenshot of the Naver Maps' street view footage of the area, with the date of the footage highlighted in red

The images of this area and other sections of Bomun Lake show that the cherry blossom trees remained intact and were in full bloom as of this year's spring season, contrary to the false claim on Facebook that half a million of these trees had been removed.

In fact, Gyeongju hosted a cherry blossom festival from March 31 to April 2, inviting tourists to admire the pink blooms across the city, including in the Bomun tourism district.

The cherry blossom trees that bloomed near Bomun Lake this spring can be seen in photos published in local reports here, here and here, as well as in YouTube videos posted by tourists, seen here and here.

No orders

A spokesperson for the Gyeongsangbuk-do Culture and Tourism Organization, which maintains the Bomun tourism district, told AFP on April 6, 2023, that the claim the trees near Bomun Lake were cut down on Moon's orders was "not true".

"We have never received any orders to cut down the cherry blossom trees, nor have we done so at any time," the spokesperson said.

"We replaced a few trees there in January this year because they were too old, not because of any orders about the trees being from Japan."

The spokesperson further explained that the cherry blossom trees were first planted when the area around Bomun Lake was designated as a tourist zone in the 1970s, and have been carefully maintained since.

"Tourists flock to Bomun to admire the cherry blossom bloom every spring," he said.

The spokesperson added that while he was not sure of the exact number of cherry blossoms in the area, he believed it "is nowhere near 500,000".

The Gyeongju city government's official website says there are "around 10,000 cherry blossom trees in the Bomun tourist district" that were planted since 1967, while local media reports here and here estimate the number of trees in Bomun to range around 14,000 to 15,000.

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