GFRIEND’s Sowon under fire for pictures of her caressing & hugging Nazi mannequin

[Astro]

GFRIEND’s Sowon has recently come under fire for pictures she uploaded to Instagram in which she appears to lovingly caresses and hugs a mannequin … a Nazi one.

For reasons that should be obvious, she deleted the post quickly after a ton of backlash. As far as the circumstances that led to those almost surreal photos, it was reportedly a set they filmed a VCR for GFRIEND’s Walpurgis Night album comeback show, though the exact location is unknown.

Also, they can’t really use the excuse of ignorance (aside from everybody in Korea knowing about WW2) of what it represented as shown by an old V Live interaction.




Yeah, I dunno, fandoms always surprise me with their excuses, but this one seems pretty clear in terms of it being horrible, and at the very least terrible judgment that deserves to be addressed.

Thankfully it does seem like most agree that it’s quite blatantly fucked up and that affiliating yourself with Nazis in any positive way is indeed terrible, so hopefully it’ll be addressed sooner than later and personally.

Source

 

[hatmixx]

 

[Astro]

Is that queen Euijin

 

[hatmixx]

Is that queen Euijin

 

[unicorn]

the k*tler one is Really Bad

 

[Ash3070]

I would LOVE to know what kpop idol PR training ACTUALLY looks like given how frequently this kind of thing (not just nazi-ism but racism, homophobia etc.) comes out. Most idols train for years but it seems like all they seem to be taught is 'don't get caught dating'. I would've thought romantising LITERAL nazis would be an obvious no-no but she and the members have been cracking nazi jokes for years? Seriously?!

And the infantilisation of the entire country of Korea whenever fans decide to go into protection mode is gross. 1. It's is the year 2021 and South Korea has the fastest internet in the world. The information is there if they had any interest. And 2. Korea is in the world. And therefore was involved in World War II. In fact, it literally led to the Korean war and the division of the nation, you'd think they'd know a thing or two events leading up to that. As k-pop fans at least, we all know about the Japan/Korea animosity. Surely they at LEAST know of Nazi Germany as Japan's ally during the war? The country is not all made up of innocent little babies with no knowledge of the outside world. You wanna argue that your bias is extremely stupid, fine you can try that I suppose. But this rush to infantilisation is frankly borderline (?) xenophobic.

My final point; usually idols need to get their posts approved. How did this get past multiple people for her to post it in the first place? Of course, as the idol and one of the faces that representing the company, Sowon is (and rightly should) incur most of the backlash. However there was gross incompetence and/or anti-semitism at play on multiple levels here.

 

[Seriously]

While yes, it's deeply fucked up. I'm also just confused why the set... even... had a nazi in the first place?

 

[Pandaa]

one time i meet germany person while on holiday they were anrgy that the bus trip take so long

 

[BianTwo]

Yes a scandal to heat up things

Many questions here

- Seems like it's a set, for a comeback ? Or was it there already ? And what's the purpose ? I read it was in a cafe, but anything said on Twitter now I'll be careful with
- So she deleted it not because of the backlash but because the jealous fans ? If yes that was a bad answer for international fans

Other things :

- It was probably approved by the label, unless Sowon gained more power and more freedom.
- It's hard to not believe any Koreans didn't knew about WWII, even if Nazi weren't as involved in Asia as in Europe
- Lacking in PR, it's not new that they are really bad at it if you follow any kpop label
- "Thankfully" the backlashes are from international fans, I don't know for the Korean side, but the group don't really rely on Western fans. However on Twitter, Instagram, Vlive and other SNS they will try to reach out until an apology is done. Source can also don't care because the backlash won't affect them much. We'll see.

As Ash said :

- The country may have the fastest internet speed in the world, a very competitive and solid technology industry, but they seems so unaware, ignorant, about anything outside their country
- South Korea decided to open themselves to the world and spread some soft power with the hallyuwave and more where they benefited a lot from. On the other hand if they don't try to be more aware or more careful they will continue to have those kind of scandals because fans from the world are watching them. And most of them are young and into SNS a lot. I don't know how long they will pretend to not care or to ignore things. Of course in other countries we can find the same issue, it maybe even worse, but these countries aren't trying to spread their image to the rest of the world so they are "safe" from their eyes.
- That brings to the "infantilisation" culture, as seen in the idol industry where idols are overprotected and letting them stay ignorant or unaware or indifferent from overseas' issues and feelings. When you have teenagers fans babysitting older idols who are 22-30 or more, like wow...
- Since they love to get inspiration from Western countries, they'll try everything, get into cliches, for the best and for the worst, because "it look cool"
- Careful about the Western centric view, even if it doesn't excuse everything. At first i didn't even recognize it was a Nazi uniform, you gotta look carefully to know. Show me an Korean or Japanese soldier WWII uniform I won't be able to know.

I'll see in one or two weeks how it will end

 

[DR. K💉M 👄]

If the post was deleted, they must've been aware of the backlash? But saying it's been deleted bc the fans will be jealous makes it sound like the problem wasn't taken seriously. An apology there and then would've done a lot.

 

[MVSica]

Well unfortunately she cant plead ignorance of not knowing since they call her kitler lol. Too bad as you could use the ignorance idea since its just the imperial eagle and not a Swastika. I'd say that she probably didn't realize the severity of how westerners would take that. I just know that if it was a soldier with rising sun Imperial Japan uniform koreans would be freaking out.

 

[MedicationHelps87]

Deeply disturbing and just in really poor judgment.
Thankfully it was deleted. I wonder what was going through their minds doing that....

 

[redvelvetus]

I found this entire situation to be disappointing and weird. I really wish she would make her own public apology instead of hiding behind the company cause I'm pretty sure some international fans specifically Jewish fans are really angry ( can you blame them?) Also, I hate that K-fans are attacking I-fans for being angry at her. That just shows how ignorant they are and honestly, at the end of the day, it's not up to Koreans to forgive her. It's up to the I- fans on whether they want to forgiver her or not.

 

[redvelvetus]

Well unfortunately she cant plead ignorance of not knowing since they call her kitler lol. Too bad as you could use the ignorance idea since its just the imperial eagle and not a Swastika. I'd say that she probably didn't realize the severity of how westerners would take that. I just know that if it was a soldier with rising sun Imperial Japan uniform koreans would be freaking out.

There was literally a swastika on the hat of the soldier. it was there