Photo shows asylum seekers on a boat off the coast of north Africa, not Vietnamese refugees in 1975

The black-and-white image of a boat crammed full of people was shared on Facebook on September 30. 

"People fleeing after the demise of South Vietnam. This is what happens when leftists are trusted," read Korean-language text above the image.

In 1975, South Vietnam's capital Saigon fell to the communist North Vietnamese forces, marking the end of the Vietnam War and the unification of the two countries. It also led to a mass exodus of refugees from the south (archived link). 

Those unable to escape overland fled the country by boat, many of whom died on the journey due to perilous conditions (archived link).

Image

Screenshot of the false post shared on Facebook. Captured October 1.

Identical posts were shared here, here and here in Facebook groups supporting South Korean right-wing politicians with thousands of members each.

But the image from 2014 shows asylum seekers in a boat in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of north Africa, not South Vietnamese refugees.  

 Asylum seekers in the Mediterranean

A reverse image search found the original photo on the website of Italian photographer Massimo Sestini (archived link).

The site includes other colour photos of the same vessel from different angles, and also shows the original image was featured on various magazine covers, including National Geographic and L'Espresso (archived link).

The image is dated June 7, 2014 and captioned:  "20 miles off the Libyan coast".

Sestini was awarded second prize in the 2015 World Press Photo contest in the general news, singles category, according to his website and the World Press Photo website (archived link).

The image was also published in reports from Time magazine and The Wall Street Journal alongside similar descriptions (archived links here and here).

Below is a screenshot comparison between the image shared on Facebook (left) and the original photo published by Time Magazine (right):

Image

Screenshot comparison between the image shared on Facebook (left) and the original photo published by Time Magazine (right)

The photo published by Time is captioned: "Italian navy rescues asylum seekers traveling by boat off the coast of Africa on the Mediterranean, June 7, 2014".

The picture is credited to Sestini, who accompanied the Italian navy on a rescue mission that month and captured rare scenes of refugees risking their lives to start anew. 

It was also published in a Guardian report from June 25, 2014 about migrants risking sea journeys from the Middle East and Africa to Europe (archived link)

A keyword search on the photo database of Polaris, a media distribution network, found it was part of a set of dozens of photographs of asylum seekers captured by Sestini at the time (archived link).

Image

Screenshot of Polaris database showing the original photo

AFP has previously debunked South Korean posts that falsely claimed a photo of an ethnic minority group in Laos showed South Vietnamese begging for their lives from the North's communist forces.