Last week, while scrolling through X, I came across a striking exchange between Turkish and South Korean users I had never heard of. Insults, national stereotypes and personal attacks were flying in both directions. What caught my attention was not simply the ugliness of the argument, but the fact that Turks and Koreans were involved in it.

Türkiye and South Korea have long enjoyed unusually warm relations. The memory of Turkish soldiers who fought in the Korean War still occupies an important place in the relationship, and Turkish officials have long described the bond as one of friendship and even "blood brotherhood.” That made the spectacle on X all the more puzzling.

The dispute had begun with an apparently innocuous Turkish post about South Korean actress Kim Go-eun. A Turkish user described her as "the most beautiful Korean who really looks Korean.” As the post spread among Korean users, the wording was interpreted as stereotyping what a "real” Korean should look like. What might have remained a semantic misunderstanding quickly escalated into insults about appearance, economic status and even the Korean War. The original poster later said the remark had been misunderstood and was intended as a compliment. By Aug.12, Turkish media were reporting what had become an online "Korea-Türkiye fight.”

Curious about how such a trivial incident could escalate so quickly, I began looking into similar cases. What I found was more interesting than the original quarrel.

Earlier this year, a dispute over fan behavior at a K-pop concert in Kuala Lumpur widened into an online clash involving users across Southeast Asia and South Korea, eventually producing boycott calls and the #SEAblings label. A separate argument with Brazilian users during the World Cup began over the tanned skin of South Korean footballer Cho Gue-sung and widened into arguments about Korean beauty standards, skin-lightening and cosmetic surgery, according to Korean weekly newspaper Ilyo Shinmun.

With Chinese users, the triggers are different: kimchi, hanbok, history and even whether one says "Lunar New Year” or "Chinese New Year” can become disputes over cultural ownership. In February, G-Dragon drew criticism from some Chinese fans after using "Lunar New Year” at a Dubai concert.

These disputes do not have one cause. China-Korea tensions often involve competing historical and cultural claims. Japan-Korea arguments carry the weight of colonial history. The Southeast Asian cases involve race, status and fandom culture. Yet the escalation often follows a similar path: a dispute between individuals is reframed as a conflict between national groups.

South Korea’s extraordinary cultural rise may help explain why.

Rising popularity of Korea

Hallyu, or the Korean Wave , did not create nationalism, xenophobia or online hostility. But soft power changes the scale of contact between societies. Millions who once had little reason to think about South Korea now watch Korean dramas, follow K-pop idols, learn Korean and debate Korean beauty standards. Greater admiration has therefore brought greater scrutiny.

Academic work has long pointed to the connection between cultural success and national self-perception. In 2011, Jeongsuk Joo examined the transnational rise of Korean popular culture alongside what she called "pop nationalism” in Korea. Youna Kim has similarly explored the Korean Wave through its implications for soft power and cultural nationalism.

There is also an important distinction between national pride and what social psychologists call "collective narcissism.” Pride in cultural achievements is not the problem. The danger appears when members of a group feel their exceptional status must be recognized by outsiders. Research led by Agnieszka Golec de Zavala found that, under perceived threats to a group’s image, collective narcissism can predict retaliatory intergroup hostility.

Applied cautiously to Hallyu, this helps explain how criticism of an idol, actor or social practice can sometimes be perceived not merely as criticism, but as a judgment on Korea itself. Social media then does the rest: individual users become representatives of nations, screenshots cross language barriers, machine translation strips away nuance and provocative responses travel further than measured ones.

None of this diminishes South Korea’s cultural achievement. Hallyu remains one of the most impressive soft-power successes of recent decades. But Koreans should also recognize a risk to that success.

When highly visible Korean users answer criticism or misunderstanding with racial insults, national stereotypes or contempt for other societies, they are not merely engaging in meaningless online quarrels. They risk damaging an image that South Korea’s government, cultural industries and artists have spent decades building.

The danger is not national pride. Koreans have every reason to be proud of their country’s transformation. The problem begins when that pride hardens into a demand for constant recognition, or when every criticism of Korean culture is treated as an attack on the nation. Healthy confidence must not be allowed to drift into collective narcissism.

If sections of Korean social media continue turning Turks, Southeast Asians, Brazilians, Chinese, Japanese or others into national adversaries whenever they feel slighted, the cost will eventually be paid in the very currency Hallyu has accumulated so successfully: goodwill.

Soft power can take decades to build. In the age of social media, it can be eroded much faster.