South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's election campaign denied false claims that banknotes seen in his first birthday photo were Japanese yen bills in 2021. However, the same claim resurfaced in October 2024 alongside accusations the president -- under whom Seoul-Tokyo relations have warmed -- was "pro-Japan from birth". In fact, the cash in the image is old South Korean hwan bills that went out of circulation in 1962, not Japanese currency of the same period.

"Internet sleuths found the money seen in Yoon Suk Yeol's first birthday photo is the Japanese yen, not the Korean won," read Korean text on the photo shared on Facebook on October 25, 2024.

"He was born with a yen spoon in his mouth."

Under Yoon's term, relations between South Korea and Japan have warmed as the neighbours reinforced security ties amid growing tensions with China and North Korea (archived link).

The East Asian countries, both crucial security allies of the United States, have long been at odds over historic issues linked to Japan's brutal 1910 to 1945 colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula, including sexual slavery and forced labour.

But the rapprochement has led to accusations within South Korea that Yoon is too dovish toward Tokyo.

Identical claims were shared on Facebook here, here and here.

Comments left in the misleading posts indicated people believed the notes were genuinely Japanese yen bills.

"His pro-Japan fate was decided from birth," one user wrote.

"His father must have been...

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