VANK is telling the world of a Chinese game company’s cultural hegemony, which is making distorted claim that ‘Hanbok is Chinese clothes’.

On October 29th, a Chinese company Papergames Inc. launched a new mobile styling game ‘Shining Nikki’ in Korea. Commemorating the launch, the company started its first event on November 4th by selling Hanbok items, traditional Korean clothing, simultaneously in Korea and China.

Regarding this event, Chinese internet users argued that Hanbok is a Chinese culture, such as a ‘Chinese Ming Dynasty Costume’ or ‘Hanbok is a costume of ethnic minority Koreans living in China’.

Regarding the incident, Papergames Inc. expressed its position on this issue as follows: “As a ‘One China’ company, the positions of Papergames and our country(China) are always consistent. We will actively fulfill our responsibility and mission as a Chinese company.” Just a week after the launch. the company deleted the Hanbok items and declared the withdrawal of the Korean business. It did not apologize for the demeaning of Hanbok and Korean culture.

The claim that Hanbok is a Chinese clothing ignores the cultural diversity and identity of other ethnic groups.

VANK believe that if we do not stop Chinese government and Chinese corporations from cultural invasion and cultural hegemony, China that distorted Hanbok as Chinese clothing will soon distort all other countries’ history and culture as Chinese culture.

Accordingly, Voluntary Agency Network of Korea, VANK, created a digital poster that report the international community of the cultural invasion of Chinese game company that distorted Hanbok as traditional Chinese clothing and the cultural hegemony of the Chinese government that supports it.

The digital poster describes teenagers from around the world holding their hands in hand and wearing each country’s traditional costume, but the Chinese teenagers are isolated from the group.

On the poster, it says “China’s cultural hegemony will isolate China. The World does not exist for China! China should respect the history and culture of the world!” The poster introduces the Global Petition asking for the international community to support and take part in it, so that the Chinese government would change its cultural hegemony policy.