Australia’s prime minister has been ridiculed after he embarrassingly mistook an Asian voter for being Chinese on the first day of his campaign trail.

Scott Morrison took to the streets of Sydney on Saturday to start winning over some of the electorate ahead of parliamentary elections on May 18.

But his campaign launch was soon mired by an embarrassing clip of him addressing a Korean woman… in Chinese.

On the campaign trail in Australia, PM Scott Morrison greets Asian voter with a ““ni hao”. “I’m Korean” she responds. pic.twitter.com/bUc8QV2iwi — Trent Murray (@trent_murray) April 13, 2019


The clip of Liberal Party leader Morrison shows him interacting with voters in the city’s multicultural Strathfield suburb when he stops to salute an Asian woman.

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The PM can be seen smiling as he shook hands with her while circled by journalists.



He can heard asking: ‘Hello, how are you? Ni hao, how are you?’

But far from being impressed at the PM’s language skills, the woman responds saying: ‘No, no, no, I’m Korean’.

The PM hoped to amuse the woman by talking to her in Chinese (Picture: Sky)

The PM, who has been in office since last year, listens to the woman’s reply before moving on from his gaffe to meet other public members.

The embarrassing scene coincidentally happened just moments after he visited a Korean restaurant in Strathfield, which has sizeable Chinese and Korean migrant populations.

It caused swift public reaction, with many Twitter users taking to the platform to slam the PM’s ‘racist’ slip.

One wrote: ‘Strathfield has a high population of Koreans. To assume they are Chinese is racist and quite stupid.’

It was too bad the woman replied ‘No, no, no, I’m Korean’ (Picture: Sky)

This was echoed by another Tweeter who said: ‘Scott Morrison accuses Labour of peddling racism.

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‘Then shouts “Ni hao” to the first Asian person he greets. Turns out she’s Korean. Grass root racism on display for all.’

While one Asian-Australian simply cared to point out that greeting fellow Asians with ‘”Ni hao”, even when I know they speak Mandarin. It’s not a thing we do.’

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