Middle Eastern K-drama fans are horrified by Son Suk-ku’s history of serving with the Zaytun Division

Xc.@periperipiri

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His military service was in Iraq, by the way

It’s not like he was dragged there—he volunteered, so they’re reacting kind of like a J-drama fan here would after seeing a Japanese celebrity whose ancestor was a war criminal..

But if you look up the Zaytun Division, you’ll see that it was a peacekeeping force Korea had little choice but to send at the US’s request. It built hospitals and public facilities and suffered very few casualties, so it wasn’t a unit that took part in invasion and massacres like the troops deployed during the Vietnam War. The administration that sent it was progressive to begin with, so it was extremely careful about that kind of thing. (Though it seems hard for that Middle Eastern fan to know all this.)

A tweet from a Korean who posted a correction

XspotifylllLL@spotifylll

Translated from X post

The South Korean military’s deployment to Iraq was centered not on direct combat operations such as search-and-destroy missions, but on postwar peacekeeping and support for rebuilding the country—the Peace and Reconstruction Operation. The Republic of Korea Armed Forces deployed units in stages from 2003 to 2008, after the Iraq War, and the main contingent representing that mission was the Zaytun Division (Zaytoun…

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AnonymousTheQooyesterday

You think they care enough to distinguish any of that before trashing him? It’s not that it’s hard to find out—they just have no intention of looking that far.

AnonymousTheQooyesterday

The US deployment to Iraq comes up all the damn time to begin with, so it’s ridiculous that they don’t look into anything and only come at us. Still, I’m glad some Koreans wrote correction replies.

AnonymousTheQooyesterday

But they still want to use the American platform X? It was a unit deployed because the US strong-armed Korea, and it built hospitals and stuff. When you look at the postwar reconstruction side of it, seeing so many complete idiots on X is stressing me out.