- Rachel Kwon told Insider she was physically mortified after her wedding photos were shared by The Sun.
- She believes the British tabloid’s headline and Facebook post encouraged negative comment.
- A spokesman for The Sun said the article showed “fair and honest reporting”.
An American woman living in South Korea says she was physically shamed after her wedding photos were shared by a British tabloid.
Rachel Kwon, 31, married her partner of eight years, Jaehwan Kwon, on June 18 in Ansan, South Korea. Rachel previously told Insiders that she made a contraption out of an umbrella and fabric to hide her dress from the groom before the ceremony.
She posted a video of the device on her TikTok in July, which had 2.5 million views as of Tuesday.
But in a video posted to TikTok on Thursday, Rachel said she spotted an article from The Sun about her clothing apparatus via Facebook on Aug. 2. Immediately, she said she noticed people had shamed her in the comments because she was slim.
Rachel included a trigger warning for mentions of body shaming and eating disorders at the beginning of her video, which had over 59,500 views as of Tuesday. She also said that while she’s never personally struggled with an eating disorder, she worries about how some people might be affected by reading the comments.
“Seeing those comments about my body in a wedding video was hurtful,” Rachel later told Insider. “I hate that young girls read these comments and get scared to come out on social media because it can be so toxic.”
She shared screenshots of the comments with Insiders, some of which appear to have since been deleted.
Rachel Kwon shared a screenshot of the negative comments posted in response to The Sun’s article.
The Sun/Facebook
It’s not clear if those who made the comments deleted them or if they were deleted by Facebook.
According to Facebook’s Bullying Prevention Hub, the company “takes incidents of bullying and harassment very seriously” and uses “a combination of user reporting and technology to find and remove this type of content.” The company says it’s “always working on new tools, re-evaluating our policies, and continually investing in detection technology to ensure we’re proactively addressing the issue.”
A spokesperson for The Sun told Insider that the publication’s Facebook page hasn’t removed the comments. Facebook officials did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Rachel thinks The Sun’s Facebook post was designed to encourage negative comments
In the The Sun article, reporter Roisin Chapman wrote about Rachel’s video and included a photo of her in her wedding dress, which was credited to her Instagram account. The article went on to cite a variety of positive and negative comments about the device that viewers had posted under Rachel’s Instagram video.
Rachel told Insider that The Sun did not interview her or attempt to reach her about the article. And she said while she has no problem with the article’s content, she believes the headline and Facebook caption were designed “to lure negative comments.”
The caption reads, “I’m a bride my one-of-a-kind wedding dress saved the day but people are calling it crazy.” Rachel said the publication was wrong to phrase the caption that way because she never said those words .
The Sun’s Facebook page captioned the post, which an Instagram user previously made of Rachel’s video: “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s a shame, but I think it gets them clicks,” Rachel said.
A Sun spokesman has defended his article
A spokesman for The Sun told Insider that the article is “clear when read in full, reports fairly and directly, and generates positive response.”
“The author has taken care to explain the cultural background, included several comments that show balance and at no point refer to the user’s body or physical appearance,” the spokesperson said.
“The original TikTok was very clearly about social media trolling, a problem across all social media platforms that The Sun has sympathized with and campaigned against,” they added.
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