AI-generated election poster reignites anti-China claims in South Korea
- Published on May 28, 2026 at 11:14
- 4 min read
- By Grace MOON, AFP South Korea
In the lead up to South Korea's local elections on June 3, an image of a campaign poster written in Chinese was shared in posts falsely claiming it was distributed by a Seoul district council candidate. The image reignited electoral fraud and anti-China claims that have frequently resurfaced as voters head to the polls, but it is in fact AI-generated. A party spokesperson told AFP the image is a fabrication -- a conclusion supported by an AI expert.
"The election poster for a Reform Party candidate running for Seoul's Gwangjin District Council is written entirely in Chinese. Is this China?" says part of a Korean-language Facebook post shared on May 26, 2026.
Attached to the post is the purported election poster written in traditional Chinese script for Kim Joo-yeon of the Reform Party -- which splintered from the main conservative opposition People Power Party (archived link).
The same image was also shared in similar X posts as South Koreans prepared to cast ballots in the June 3 local elections, the first nationwide vote since President Lee Jae Myung took office.
The posts, by predominantly right-wing users, pointed to the poster as evidence of Kim seeking support from the Chinese Communist Party, that Kim is a Chinese national, and of evidence of election fraud.
The circulating image, however, is not a genuine election poster distributed by either the candidate or his party.
In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, a growing number of South Koreans have fostered negative perceptions of China (archived link). The sentiment has proven to be fertile ground for online misinformation, with claims tying Chinese nationals to electoral and visa fraud surfacing around elections.
Fabricated poster
A spokesperson for the Reform Party told AFP on May 27 the image was fabricated and the party has requested the National Election Commission (NEC) investigate the issue.
Party leader Lee Jun-seok also said in a Facebook post on the same day that Kim's poster had been altered using AI technology, and complaints had been filed against "all those who posted false claims" as well as "those who further disseminated the material" (archived link).
According to an analysis conducted by the Vera AI detection tool, available within the Verification Plugin, the image contains "strong evidence" suggesting it is synthetic.
Howard Kim, a professor of AI convergence technology at Seoul Cyber University, told AFP on May 27 that the circulating image appears to have been "generated by AI using a translation prompt" (archived link).
In the circulating image, the QR code does not scan properly, he noted, adding that the number "4" appears slightly tilted and that the original orange colour had shifted to a "more reddish tone".
"These appear to be artefacts automatically generated by an image-generation engine, using AI technology that virtually anyone can access nowadays," he said.
Since 2023, South Korea has strictly banned the creation and distribution of AI-generated content involving election candidates "that is difficult to distinguish from reality" during the three months preceding an election (archived link).
The country, which in January 2026 became the first to fully implement a comprehensive law regulating AI, has hired hundreds of staff to track and counter manipulated content ahead of the June 3 vote (archived here and here).
First shared in Taiwan
A reverse image search on Google indicates the AI-generated image first spread among online users based in Taiwan, who were amused by Kim's experience as a former beginner-level video game champion -- a detail listed on the candidate's original election poster (archived link).
"A South Korean graduate of Taiwan's National Sun Yat-sen University is running for local council and even included on the campaign poster that he ranked as the No. 1 MapleStory beginner player in 2006," an X user based in Taiwan posted on May 25. "That's impressive."
The X post shares Kim's original poster next to an AI-generated version translated into traditional Chinese, with the detail about MapleStory underlined in red. The iconic multiplayer role-playing game has recorded over 260 million registered players worldwide since its 2003 release (archived link).
Kim graduated from National Sun Yat-sen University, a public research university in Taiwan, and previously worked as a Chinese-language instructor (archived link). Contrary to online claims, he is a South Korean citizen (archived link).
Professor Kim noted that "it does not appear that the Chinese-language posts were created with any particular political intent," pointing out that the images specifically underlined the MapleStory reference.
"It seems that users were intrigued by how the candidate highlighted his MapleStory ranking on an election poster, after which they generated a Chinese-language version to explain and showcase that detail," he said.
Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS and other news outlets on the island also picked up Kim's MapleStory credentials in a report about the campaign poster after it was shared by social media users there (archived here and here).
AFP has previously debunked false claims about election fraud in South Korea as well as the rise of anti-China disinformation in the country.
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