SEOUL — Just whose new year is it, anyway?
The venerable British Museum is the latest to be dragooned into the Asian culture wars when it publicized a performance by a South Korea entertainment troupe over this week’s traditional East Asian holiday season, urging the public to join a celebration of what it billed as the “Korean Lunar New Year.”
That sparked a furious online backlash.
“Stop appropriating my culture, it’s Chinese new year,” was one of the more restrained responses on Twitter. The museum swiftly retreated, posting a traditional Chinese painting with the hashtag “Chinese New Year.