A Facebook video claimed that the Philippines and South Korea have entered into an alliance to oppose China. This is false. There is no such agreement between the two countries.
Uploaded on Sept. 25, the video is a clickbait that merely showed clips of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s visit to a Philippine Navy drill and a feature on a South Korean-based shipbuilding company engaged in building warships for the country. Not one supports the headline that read:
“ITO NA PINAS AT SOUTH KOREA SANIB PWERSA NA! PARA PIGILAN ANG PANANAKOP NG CHINA. (Here it is! Philippines and South Korea have joined forces to stop China’s invasion).”
No such alliance exists but the two countries’ armies signed in 2022 an accord to collaborate in areas such as disaster response, technology cooperation, information exchange and reciprocal visits, among others.
In 1994, the Philippines and South Korea also signed a memorandum of understanding for logistics and defense industry cooperation.
The erroneous video only played clips of Radio Television Malacañang’s coverage of Marcos’ speech during a naval drill on May 19 in San Antonio, Zambales. It also showed Naval News’ 2022 feature on Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) where it presented the designs of offshore patrol vessels (OPV) and corvettes for the Philippine Navy.
The country has purchase contracts with HHI for two new corvettes and six OPVs that were signed by the defense department in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Uploaded by Facebook accounts PH Voice and PH Speaker, the video received 152,000 views, 7,100 reactions, 313 comments and 292 shares.
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