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On October 10 a Chinese woman wrote a post on an internet message board about how she spoke back to a rude Korean colleague, and it soon sparked comments and debate on Korean and Chinese attitudes towards fake goods, and towards each other.

According to the woman’s post, when she was searching for her work pass in the elevator, her female Korean colleague saw a Prada purse in her handbag and asked her if it was real. When she replied that she thought so, her colleague sarcastically told her, ‘I’ve never seen real Prada goods being sold in China’. The Chinese woman then retorted with, ‘Well I’ve never seen a real face in Seoul’.

Their catty back-and-forth quickly became a talking point around the net with many Chinese users commenting on it, and Japanese netizens voicing their opinions too.

Chinese netizen responses:

“Good thinking! Kudos to her.”
“A hero of our race.”
“She’s got a sense of humour.”
“There’s loads of Koreans who buy fakes.”
“I don’t approve of what she said, but I understand her feelings.”
“Did she really need to go that far? I think some people want to be friends but they can’t express it well because they’re not good at speaking Chinese. There’s a lot of people like that in Korea and Japan.”
“The main reason Koreans create problems is that they’re so proud they think they’re always right. This personality doesn’t help with making friends.”

Japanese netizen responses:

“That’s an extraordinarily sharp comeback lol”
“This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”
“Didn’t Hong Kong and Korea used to be the place for fakes? Actually, even now lol”
“I wanna copy her snappy comeback.”
“It’s just parroting her words back, but she did it well.”
“Korea has loads of fakes…”
“Chinese still have a more favorable impression.”
“Are there any countries that have no fakes at all…”

What started as one woman sharing her workplace drama, and an admittedly very sharp comeback, has turned into a commentary on how different Asian cultures feel about each other. Some of the comments focus on the funny side of the exchange, but as you can see there are also a fair amount of people turning it into a chance to insult people of other races. If only we could all get along…but this is the Internet, so unfortunately there’s probably no chance of that.

Source: Alfalfalfa
Image: The Pirate’s Dilemma