alt Hacker Newsyour claim that Chinese influence in South Korea is merely a MAGA conspiracy theory ignores the substantial economic and corporate reality on the ground, and inaccurately projects an irrelevant American political divide onto Korean geopolitics. In Korea, wariness of Chinese influence is a broad, bipartisan issue.
there are many Chinese manual laborers in Korea, Chinese capital has also been heavily integrated into top-tier Korean tech firms and conglomerates. For example, Tencent is one of the largest shareholders in Korea's biggest gaming and tech companies, holding massive stakes in Kakao, Netmarble, and Krafton, while recently attempting to acquire major stakes in Nexon and Kakao Mobility. To say they are rarely 'significant business partners' is factually incorrect. This is just the tip of the iceberg the portfolio of Chinese capital is diverse and expands across media including JTBC which has been pushing very pro-beijing and anti-american view in particular framing the current bipartisan wariness of China as "far right MAGA" exactly as you typed. lee Jae-myung administration which generally leans more toward Beijing has to carefully navigate. Non-partisan groups like Pew Research consistently report that roughly 80% of South Koreans hold an unfavorable view of China making it one of the highest in the world. Notably, Pew also found that South Korea is unique in that its younger generation holds more negative views of China than its older generation the exact opposite demographic makeup of the US MAGA movement.
Dismissing these well-documented geopolitical and economic realities as a fringe talking point simply doesn't reflect the situation on the ground in South Korea and this is why I ask,
are you really Korean and how come you don't know these basic facts? a quick search in Korean would reveal numerous articles that back up China's capital deployment in South Korea especially in sensitive areas.
you can't really fault Koreans for their wariness, many Chinese pretend to be Korean online/offline without good intentions. I can tell you that this is only going to end in violence and more discrimination against Chinese in Korea and people who don't even support CCP are going to be impacted.
I said this precisely because I am Korean and have been working in the IT industry right here in Korea. How many Chinese people do you think work at Naver, Kakao, Carrot, and Baemin in Korea? (Coupang might be an exception. I have often heard colleagues from Coupang badmouth the Chinese people there.) I have never worked in the Bay Area, and I only know about the US software industry through this site, but it is certain that a much higher proportion of Chinese people work in the IT industry there. (The biggest reason for this is actually that they need to speak Korean to work in Korea.)
Just as there are many young people on MAGA, there are also many young Koreans who are caught up in right-wing conspiracy theories. The fact that they are 'concerned' is not proof that China is actually exerting influence over Korean IT companies and society as a whole. There is a significant difference between making foreign investments and infiltration.