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Stills from TikTok showing a Vietnamese woman in leggings doing a yoga pose outside of the Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul. 

A Vietnamese woman who visited South Korea last month stirred controversy in her home country after she posted images of herself doing yoga positions in tight leggings in front of Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul.

VN Express, a Vietnamese newspaper, reported Monday that a woman from Hanoi did a yoga handstand in green leggings in front of the stone wall by Gwanghwamun, the gate of Gyeongbok Palace, during a trip to Korea. The woman had reportedly arrived in Korea on Oct. 29.

A video shared on TikTok Sunday shows the woman holding the yoga pose while other tourists pass by, some of whom were gawking at her.

VN Express reported that “the photos quickly went viral, drawing criticism from many social media users who labeled her actions as ‘offensive’ and ‘inappropriate.’”

“The palace is a sacred place in their country, much like our Hue Imperial City. Her behavior is disgraceful,” one social media user reportedly commented.

Hue Imperial City was the palace of the Nguyễn Dynasty (1802-1945), the last dynasty of Vietnam. The Nguyễn Dynasty managed to unify the country but eventually came under the domination of French colonial forces. In 1993, the imperial city was registered with UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

“While yoga is beneficial for health, displaying one's body in such a manner in public is offensive and disrespectful. Moreover, that site is sacred and a symbol of South Korean tourism,” another commenter said.

Some social media users were concerned that such behavior would create a negative impression of Vietnamese.

But the woman in question said criticism online was excessive, VN Express reported, noting that she had neither broken any rules nor been rebuked by palace security.

“Everyone has their own preferences, and we should respect differences,” the woman reportedly said.

This isn’t the first time that doing yoga in public places has stirred up debate in Vietnam. Last month, foreign tourists shot a much-discussed video of women in leggings doing yoga on Fansipan (elevation of 3,147 meters), the highest mountain in Vietnam, in the northern part of the country. And in May, a group of women was fined for disrupting traffic when they filmed themselves doing yoga in the middle of a street in Thai Binh, a province in northern Vietnam.

By Lee You-jin, staff reporter

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