Analysis: No evidence supports viral story of US soldier’s assault in South Korea
A post on Weibo dated Feb. 4 alleged that a U.S. military person was involved in a violent street brawl in South Korea. The post included two screenshots purportedly taken from Korean TV news reports showing the incident.
This article post, shared by a verified Weibo user, stated that an American soldier live-streamed the incident on Xiaohongshu (known as RedNote in English), acting on a suggestion from a Chinese netizen to assault passersby on camera to gain followers.
The article further claimed that the incident drew attention from South Korean authorities; meanwhile, the United States Forces Korea (UKFK) admonished the soldier and issued a statement forbidding troops from “beating people up just to gain followers.”
The unverified rumor about the violent incident spread widely after many TikTok users in the U.S. migrated to the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu earlier this year. Similar claims also appeared on Baidu Baijiahou, Douyin, X, Xiaohongshu, Zhihu and Facebook.
These posts have collectively amassed over 20,000 likes although many users on different platforms questioned the authenticity of the claim and demanded the recording of the live stream.
Annie Lab investigated the claim and found no evidence that substantiates the allegation. As far as we can tell, there is no media coverage in English or Korean discussing such a stunt by a U.S. soldier in recent months. There was no statement issued by USFK regarding this alleged incident, either.
What we can prove is that many visual materials that accompany those posts have nothing to do with the alleged violence against Korean citizens.
Old news footage
The two screenshots attached to the Weibo article are taken from old Korean news broadcasts in 2022.
The first screenshot shows a person lying on the ground near a white car. A logo of YTN, a Korean news network, was visible in this image. With this clue, we found a November 2022 YTN report.
At around 1:30 (archived here) it discussed a U.S. soldier stationed at Dongducheon getting involved in an altercation with local citizens after jaywalking. The soldier tried to flee the scene afterwards, according to the security camera footage obtained by YTN.
We traced another screenshot to a December 2022 news report by South Korean broadcaster SBS (archived here). It reported on a drunken U.S. soldier who assaulted a taxi driver and fled.
While both incidents concerned U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea, they are old news that happened in 2022. Neither news report mentioned live-streaming assaults or gaining followers.
No evidence of USFK announcement
Annie Lab reviewed the official USFK website but found no press release or announcement confirming the alleged statement that “forbids troops from assaulting civilians for social media followers” as of this writing. We reached out to USFK for clarification but have not yet received a response.
Irrelevant TikTok live stream recording
Some videos circulating online with this claim included footage of an individual wearing a U.S. military uniform, implying that this person is the one who live-streamed the incident on Xiaohongshu.
However, we can confirm that this footage came from a livestream on TikTok, not Xiaohongshu. The account owner, @chris.p.sparks, puts Tennessee in the United States as his location in his Instagram profile, not South Korea.
We compared the footage used in a post on Douyin with the TikTok livestream (see below).
We contacted the account owner for clarification via email and Instagram but have not yet received any response as of this writing. Additionally, he publicly lists his social media accounts, which indicates that he does not use Xiaohongshu (RedNote).
On TikTok, he live-streams his communication with his followers daily.
Another unverified video
A video of a caucasian man beating an Asian-looking man in what appears to be a shopping center was also widely shared with similar claims.
It is also one of the most widely shared videos associated with the claim in question, and we are actively investigating its origin. If you have any information, please reach out to us via our hotline page or email.
We will update this story or write a new one as soon as we discover the origin of this clip (shown below).
