SEOUL, Nov 25 — Super Junior’s Choi Siwon is under fire from Chinese social media users over his apparent support of the Hong Kong protests.
Yesterday, the K-pop star retweeted an interview with Patrick Chow, the 21-year-old unarmed protester who was shot and critically injured by a police officer in Hong Kong.
His shooting, which was captured on video and shared widely online, set off a chain of increasingly violent events with clashes erupting across the semi-autonomous Chinese city on November 11.
The post shared by Choi highlighted a quote from Chow in which he said, “People can be killed by bullets. But beliefs can’t be killed”.
Choi has since un-retweeted it, but not before it was spotted by Chinese social media users and widely shared.
As a result, he has been bombarded with messages — both in support of his apparent stance as well as critical of it — on his both Twitter and Instagram accounts.
In response, Choi took to his Weibo in an attempt to explain matters today, saying that he was only showing his interest in Hong Kong and hoping that the chaos and violence would end soon.
“Since the controversy caused by this behaviour makes you all feel disgusted and disappointed, I express my sincerest apologies to all of you,” he wrote to his 16.5 million followers on the microblogging site.
Hong Kong’s protest movement erupted earlier this year when leader Carrie Lam’s government introduced a Bill that would have allowed extraditions to China’s opaque judicial system.
It was later withdrawn but the anger it unleashed triggered a wider movement for change that brought millions into the streets and saw violent clashes between police and protesters.
