K-pop fans reacted swiftly to the avowals of allegiance to China.
Many of the statements came after protesters opposed to Beijing's growing influence over semi-autonomous Hong Kong removed a Chinese flag and tossed it into Victoria Harbour earlier this month.
Song and Zhang, a member of popular group EXO, have shown their Chinese pride on Instagram, in Song's case uploading an image of the Chinese flag last week with the caption"Hong Kong is part of China forever." Such posts would only be seen by their international fans because Instagram, like most Western social media sites, is blocked by the ruling Chinese Communist Party's censors.
Wang, a member of the group Got7, used to carry a Hong Kong flag and wear a hat with the city's symbol, a bauhinia flower. Lately, he has been carrying a Chinese flag on his concert tour and was wearing a China flag hoodie in his music video. China's government and entirely state-controlled media have consistently portrayed the Hong Kong protest movement as an effort by criminals trying to split the territory from China, backed by hostile foreigners.
The statement in a Weibo post was prompted by Samsung having separate language options for users in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan on their global website. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional Chinese characters instead of the simplified ones used in mainland China, and Hong Kong also has English as an official languages. Samsung declined to comment on whether it will continue to provide different language options for Taiwan and Hong Kong.
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