Photo shows Korean women meeting US official, not Chinese women fawning over 'master'

Published on April 10, 2024 at 10:36
3 min read
By Tommy WANG, AFP Hong Kong

As US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen held high-level talks in China in April 2024, an old photo of the official meeting five South Korean women resurfaced in Chinese social media posts that falsely suggested the women were Chinese and pleased to meet "their master". Online nationalists had previously accused a group of women who dined with Yellen on a previous trip of betraying the country. The photo in fact shows women economists and entrepreneurs who met Yellen during a trip to Seoul in July 2022.

The photo was shared more than 380 times after it was posted on Weibo on April 5, 2024, a day after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in China for talks with officials and business leaders.

"Recognition from US official, these are genuine, heartfelt smiles upon meeting their master," read the photo's simplified Chinese caption, echoing accusations levelled at a group of women who dined with the American official during a previous visit to the country in July 2023.

According to a Bloomberg report, online nationalists accused the group of betraying their country by interacting with Yellen (archived link).

Screenshot of the false Weibo post, captured on April 9, 2024

The same photo was also shared elsewhere on Weibo and social media platform X, alongside similar claims during Yellen's visit -- where she pressed Beijing over fears, which China called "groundless", that the country's industrial subsidies for green energy, cars and batteries could flood global markets with cheap goods.

But the photo is unrelated to Yellen's most recent visit to China. It was taken in July 2022 in Seoul, South Korea.

Korean women entrepreneurs

A reverse image search on Google and subsequent keyword searches on X found a post by Yellen on her official account from July 19, 2022 that features the same group photo (archived link).

It was included in a thread documenting her participation in a series of events with women economists and entrepreneurs in Seoul at the time.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the image shared in the false Weibo post (left) and the same image posted on Yellen's X account (right):

Screenshot comparison between the image shared in the false Weibo post (left) and the same image posted on Yellen's X account (right)

Further searches found a similar photo in AFP's archives that shows Yellen alongside the same group of women.

Screenshot of photo showing Yellen posing with women entrepreneurs in Seoul, as seen in the AFP archives

The caption reads: "US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (L) poses for a photo with women entrepreneurs before a lunch meeting in Seoul on July 19, 2022."

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency also published a similar photo from the lunch meeting (archived link).

According to a readout of the July 19, 2022 meeting published by the US Department of the Treasury, Yellen and the participants talked about increasing the number of women in leadership roles in South Korea (archived link).

The readout lists the names of all the participants, none of whom are Chinese.

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