Friday, April 4, 2008

Nazis. Skin Cream. Oops?

A Korean cosmetics campaign has drawn the attention of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The folks at SWC were less than impressed to find an abundance of "Nazi imagery" in Coreana Cosmetic's Co.'s recent commercial for skin cream. The 30 second spot featured some general military imagery, with a swastika thrown in for good measure. The original version of the same ad reportedly contained the slogan: "Even Hitler didn't have the East and West." Apparently somebody at Coreana Cosmetic Co. decided that subtly was a lost art form and nixed that part. Either way, the SWC wasn't particularly amused to find that the advertising department at Coreana Cosmetic's failed to receive the memo that giving Hitler a spot in your commercial might be considered just a tad insensitive.

Even after having a couple of days to sit on this, I'm shocked that this one snuck by the Korea Land censors. Stunned! It's not like there's a Hitler HOF in the same neighborhood as my school, or anything. There's simply no way that a civilized society would allow for something so potentially offensive to stand.

Right? Right.

In news completely unrelated to bigotry, last week I was informed by one of my coworkers that "Koreans aren't racist". None of them. "It's different than in Canada". It sure is! More on that later.

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