Post by Admin on Oct 21, 2019 23:43:12 GMT
Uniqlo has pulled a commercial featuring a 98-year-old US fashion figure from South Korean screens, it said on Monday (Oct 21) after it was accused of whitewashing colonial history.
South Korea and Japan are both United States allies, democracies and market economies faced with an overbearing China and nuclear-armed North Korea, but their relationship is deeply strained by the legacy of Tokyo's 20th-century expansionism.
The latest example is an advert for Uniqlo fleeces showing elderly fashion celebrity Iris Apfel chatting with designer Kheris Rogers, 85 years her junior. The last line has the white-haired Apfel, asked how she used to dress as a teenager, innocuously responding: "Oh my God. I can't remember that far back."
But Uniqlo's Korean arm subtitled its version of the ad slightly differently, reading: "I can't remember things that happened more than 80 years ago."
That would put the moment as 1939, towards the end of Japan's brutal colonial rule over the Korean peninsula, where the period is still bitterly resented, and some South Koreans reacted furiously.
"A nation that forgets history has no future. We can't forget what happened 80 years ago that Uniqlo made fun of," commented one Internet user on Naver, the country's largest portal.
The phrase "Uniqlo, comfort women", in reference to women forced to become sex slaves to Japanese troops during World War II, was among the most searched terms on Naver at the weekend, and demonstrators protested outside Uniqlo shops on Monday.
Seoul and Tokyo are currently locked in a bitter trade and diplomatic row stemming from historical disputes, and South Korean consumers have mounted boycotts of Japanese products.
Analysts said the controversy demonstrated the politicisation of the neighbours' complex history. The reaction was excessive, said Mr Kim Sung-han, a former foreign affairs vice-minister who teaches at Korea University, involving a "jump in logic" that "assumes everything Uniqlo does is political as a Japanese company".
"I don't see how her remark could be linked to the comfort women issue," he added. "This is overly sensitive."
