False: Blurred image does not show feces on the floor at this year’s Hanteo Music Awards
After the 31st Hanteo Music Awards in South Korea, which recognizes top artists and recordings based on the Hanteo Chart during 2023, ended on Feb. 18, 2024, a digitally blurred image purportedly showing excrement on the floor began circulating widely with a claim that an audience relieved themselves.
The image was included in some entertainment news articles online, such as She.com, Korea Star Daily and Yahoo News Hong Kong. This incident was heavily discussed along with this image on a local forum LIHKG, which had over 500 upvotes in less than 24 hours.
As of this writing, a simple keyword search with “hanteo 2024” on YouTube results in numerous videos also talking about it in multiple languages, although not all of them feature this image in question.
The picture shows a blurred object in the color brown on what appears to be a stadium floor. Next to it are the shoes of an audience, seemingly stained with some brown substance.
However, this photo has nothing to do with this year’s popular music awards. The blurred image was made from a seven-year-old photo taken in July 2017 during a concert that was part of a reality competition show, Production 101, Season 2.
The original picture is not blurred and shows long black hair. Reportedly, an audience cut off someone else’s bun during the event, resulting in the hair falling to the floor.
The manipulated image not only blurred out the hair to make it look like a dirty object but also added brown smudges to the back of the sneakers. The two images are identical otherwise.
Many fans, netizens and online media coverage described this year’s Hanteo Music Awards with words like “chaos,” full of “horrible incidents” and “hot mess.” Some raised concerns about the security and the audience safety.
