- Rachel Kwon told Insider she was body-shamed after her wedding photos were shared by The Sun.
- She believes the British tabloid's headline and Facebook post encouraged negative comments.
- A spokesperson for The Sun said the article demonstrates "fair and straight reporting."
An American woman who lives in South Korea says she was body-shamed after her wedding photos were shared by a British tabloid.
Rachel Kwon, 31, married her partner of eight years, Jaehwan Kwon, in Ansan, South Korea, on June 18. Rachel previously told Insider 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 contraption to her TikTok in July, which has 2.5 million views as of Tuesday.
But in a video posted to TikTok on Thursday, Rachel said she discovered an article from The Sun about her dress contraption through Facebook on August 2. Immediately, she said she noticed people had body-shamed her for being slim in the comments section.
Rachel included a trigger warning for mentions of body-shaming and eating disorders at the beginning of her video, which has over 59,500 views as of Tuesday. She also said that while she personally has never struggled with an eating disorder, she worries about how some people could be affected by reading the comments.
"Seeing those comments about my body on a happy wedding video was hurtful," Rachel later told Insider. "I hate that young girls are reading those comments and becoming scared to put themselves out there on social media because of how toxic it can be."
She shared screenshots of the comments with Insider, some of which appear to have since been deleted.
It is not clear whether 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 reports 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 are proactively tackling the problem."
A spokesperson for The Sun told Insider that the publication's Facebook page did not remove the comments. Representatives for Facebook did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Rachel thinks The Sun's Facebook post was framed in a way to encourage negative comments
In The Sun's 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 quote a variety of positive and negative comments about the contraption that viewers had posted under Rachel's Instagram video.
Rachel told Insider that The Sun did not interview her or attempt to reach out to her for the article. And she said while she doesn't have an issue with the content of the article, she believes the headline and Facebook caption were framed in a way "to bait negative comments."
The headline reads: "I'm a bride – my unique wedding dress essential saved the day but people are calling it crazy." Rachel said the publication was wrong to phrase the headline in this manner because she never said those words.
The Sun's Facebook page captioned the post with a comment that an Instagram user previously made on Rachel's video: "That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen."
"That's a shame but it gets them clicks I guess," Rachel said.
A Sun spokesperson has defended its article
A spokesperson for The Sun told Insider that the article is "clearly, when read in full, fair and straight reporting and leads on the positive reaction."
"The writer has taken care to explain the cultural background, has included multiple comments which show balance and at no point references the users body or physical appearance," the spokesperson said.
"The original TikTok was quite clearly about trolling on social media, a problem on all social media platforms that The Sun sympathizes with and has campaigned against," they added.