Interesting - when I first looked at that I assumed it was something the C# compiler was checking for, but even if you emit the IL directly to remove any chance of interference it still happens, which means it really is the newobj op-code that's doing the checking.
var method = new DynamicMethod("Test", null, null);
var il = method.GetILGenerator();
il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldc_I4_0);
il.Emit(OpCodes.Newarr, typeof(char));
il.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, typeof(string).GetConstructor(new[] { typeof(char[]) }));
il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldc_I4_0);
il.Emit(OpCodes.Newarr, typeof(char));
il.Emit(OpCodes.Newobj, typeof(string).GetConstructor(new[] { typeof(char[]) }));
il.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeof(object).GetMethod("ReferenceEquals"));
il.Emit(OpCodes.Box, typeof(bool));
il.Emit(OpCodes.Call, typeof(Console).GetMethod("WriteLine", new[] { typeof(object) }));
il.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);
method.Invoke(null, null);
It also equates to true if you check against string.Empty which means this op-code must have special behaviour to intern empty strings.
