'Zoombombers' hack dance teacher's lesson to racially taunt her about coronavirus
It was 6:45 a.m. on Monday, and Joori Jung was beginning her morning stretches class via Zoom, as she has been doing in the two weeks since her Detroit dance studio closed its doors because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Ten minutes into the virtual lesson, Jung noticed two people joining her Zoom session, which was posted online and open to the public.
"What's up my (expletive)?" one male newcomer said to the class, as seen in the video recording of the lesson provided to the Free Press.
Jung is seen calmly getting up from her pose and approaching her computer to address the situation. While both of the lesson crashers had their audio enabled, only one had a photo.
"Why the (expletive) are you looking like that, why are you smiling?" One said as Jung, the founder and artistic director of ArtLab J, worked to figure out how to remove the newcomers.
In the time it took Jung to work the technology — less than one minute — both male crashers are heard spewing out taunts using faux foreign accents. One asked Jung, who is from Korea, why she gave him the coronavirus.
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"It was very embarrassing, because my students were watching, but I kept trying to smile through it," Jung said.
With the rise in businesses and educational institutions turning to video-conferencing app Zoom to continue connecting while in quarantine, so has rates of hackers infiltrating sessions, so much so that the term "Zoombombing" was created.
ArtLab J offers free virtual classes to the public, and previously did not required registration or a password to join Zoom sessions. Students will now be required to register for classes and will receive a link for the class and a password via email.
Jung said the studio turned to Zoom because it was a way to have interactive lessons with students, rather than posting videos online for people to simply follow along. Instructors, who teach classes every day of the week, are able to provide students with feedback in real time.
"It's not just the physical movement, we're sharing energy," she said.
This was her first instance of racial-based prejudice since moving to the United States 10 years ago, Jung said.
"Living in Detroit, and I'm an Asian woman, people worry about it. But actually I've never worried about that," she said, "even when people call out to me, saying 'Hey China!' It's a big country, so sometimes people don't know about smaller countries.
"People targeting Asians, and I get why people could think that way, but coronavirus shouldn't be related to a group."
Jung said with this virus pandemic, we should be fighting this disease together, not turning against one another as coronavirus does not discriminate.
"So many people are losing their jobs, our kids can't go to school, why do we need to hurt each other?" she said. "I’m going to continue. This has not made me feel afraid, if anything this has made me feel like I need to speak up to educate more people.”
After the incident, Jung said, she felt the need to have a discussion with her eldest child, 4, about race and facing discrimination.
"You should know that our skin is different, but we are all the same," she told her son.
“The most important thing when we meet each other is to look inside, not outside,” Jung said. “We need to stop looking at differences, we are the same blood.”
Follow Miriam Marini on Twitter: @mmarini36.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Zoom hacking: Detroit dance teacher racially taunted during lesson
