Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mervsdamun]

Oh dear...

Nazi makeup campaign sparks outrage


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A leading anti-Semitism watchdog group called Friday for a South Korean cosmetics company to halt an ad campaign with Nazi references.

The television ad for a skin lotion made by Coreana Cosmetics Co. shows a young woman in a short skirt and military-style trench coat, holding a soldier's cap at her side that appears to have the swastika-gripping eagle Nazi insignia. Background noises of an explosion and crowds cheering in response to a man's unintelligible speech are heard.

An earlier version shown in previews and posted on the Web contained the slogan: "Even Hitler didn't have the East and West."

The Los Angeles, California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement that it sent a letter to company leaders calling for the ad campaign to be withdrawn, citing the Nazi imagery and Hitler slogan.

"These images and references are (an) insult to the memory of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust," the center's associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper wrote. "Survivors of those atrocities are outraged that their suffering at the hand of these racist murderers is being mocked by such a campaign."

However, company spokesman Kim Yoon-oh said the slogan has already changed to: "No one has ever had the East and West." The phrase was meant to boast of the product's dual moisturizing and calming effects.

The company said it had not received the Wiesenthal Center complaint, but Kim said concerns of potential controversy prompted the slogan change before the ad began airing in February.

The commercial still features the same militaristic imagery, but Kim said Coreana was not aware of the Nazi-style logo on the model's cap. He said the costume was selected by a stylist affiliated with Korad, a Seoul-based firm that produced the commercial.

A Korad official, Seo Sang-hee, confirmed the ad was meant to invoke a Nazi soldier and Hitler, which she said symbolize "revolution" in keeping with the lotion's "revolutionary" dual functions.

Seo said the commercial was not designed to promote Hitler, but rather the idea that the cosmetics will succeed in both East and West, which Hitler failed to do.

Last year, a South Korean publisher agreed to rewrite a best-selling children's book on U.S. history after the Wiesenthal Center criticized it for containing messages that echoed Nazi propaganda.

The center has previously protested uses of Nazi themes in Korean bars and nightclubs.

[RACETRAITOR]

Welcome back. How was your trip to Mars?

[Imrahil]

They just don't get it!!!!!

[Adventurer]

I am glad that this hit the news. I've been waiting for something to hit the news, because often things don't change until people lose face or get embarassed. Using Hitler to sell cosmetics is horrible. Imagine someone glorifying Hideki Tojo or some Japanese general and admiring him for killing Korean people. That's just horrible in my book. I hope there will be more sensitivity in this country to the horrors people endured during the holocaust. That company should apologize for their ad.

[Imrahil]

What disturbs me is how they keep doing this. First bars and now cosmetics?????? What's next, a Korean condom maker will use nazi images to sell condoms? Hey, how about using nazi images to promote plastic surgery!!!! Also why would you use Hitler to sell cosmetics anyway, it is not like he wore any? At least to my knowledge.

[Adventurer]

[ED209]

[Smee]

Here's an interesting article from Gusts of Popular Feeling: http://populargusts.blogspot.com/2008/04/apologies-in-comparison.html

A few years back there was a Korean advertisement that used an actress dressed up like a comfort woman. The comfort women got upset, and demanded a series of apologies, including demanding the actress get down on her knees in front of them and in front of the media. They still weren't satisfied.

And yet, this ad company gets off without an apology or any sort of reckoning or atonement. They change one word of the advertisement, and that's it. Don't even make a public statement. *beep* 'em.

The ads were pulled from youtube and have been taken off Naver, but you can still find them on Daum. Racetraitor, I'll email the videos to you when I get home from work.

[Css]

[Adventurer]

You forget that 27 million Russians, 2 million Poles, gypsies, homosexual died as well. About 11 million died in the holocaust (the shoah) and of the 11 million around 6 million were born of the Jewish faith. It was a tragedy. Hitler was a manifestation of the anger Germans felt after World War I. There is no need to glorify that anger and the ensuing suffering. Yes, the Nazis were disciplined and the German soldiers worked hard and defended their country as they saw it in many ways, but it was led by a mad man who harmed Germany and Europe.

[Css]

I guess i just dont see how a reference to hitlers failure is glorifying him. Or is it just the presence of imagery that does that?

[mervsdamun]

I don't get this bit:

[RACETRAITOR]

[mervsdamun]

Hitler may not have worn cosmetics, but his scientists used human subjects for a series of dreadful experiments. Some included attempts to manufacture soap using human ingredients.

[Css]