Hmm what's going on in South Korea and Hungary? Do Hungary boomers have more communist nostalgia?
I dunno about Hungary but with South Korea its quite simple. SK despite claiming its different has a massive overlap with China in what they compete in.
As a young person over there, as China rises you see South Korea going back to the old days where it was vassal state of China. Whether its the Mongolians, Chinese or Manchus, all of them are bad for Koreans. Doesn't matter which guy is in charge of SK, they are not blind to this. Its just SK is controlled by the US at the moment so they cannot swap to China's side.
I remember reading about about South Korea has all this soft power a few years back. Now we already seeing it decline as people can see through the illusion since South Korea's hard power is declining.
In the China Semiconductor thread, we see Samsung is already in trouble with regards to semiconductors and TSMC's lead over them is widening. Because of sanctions for China, Samsung suddenly is going to lose a lot of business. Then lets not forget Samsung phones are no longer as cool when people realize buying a cheaper China phone that can still do most things is better value for money. The crown Jewel of South Korea which we thought was safe now finds itself in a hard position. And its due to either forms of Chinese.
Then we see its actual results in sports. SK really only has its football team left. Did you know SK won the first Table Tennis Men's gold at the Olympics? Hard to believe given China's dominance. But even if SK started well, its now China's game. Same applies to a lot of other sports. To SK, China is that great wall that prevents its athletes from obtaining gold. They can make cartoons saying they won Gold at the Olympics in swimming but in real life we know Pan Zhanle won the 100m.
So to young people in SK, they are asking if only China was still weak and poor, we would stand out and be on top! No amount of KPOP can wash away this. And speaking of which, since BTS is on hiatus, the other artists cannot carry the KPOP weight and therefore people will gradually lose interest.
