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Korean K-pop band BTS on stage in 2017
Korean K-pop band BTS on stage in 2017. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
Korean K-pop band BTS on stage in 2017. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

BTS should apologise to Japan and Nazi victims, says rabbi

This article is more than 5 years old

K-pop band accused of mocking the past as row over ‘atomic bomb’ T-shirt continues

A Jewish human rights organisation has condemned the K-pop band BTS over photographs of them wearing Nazi-style hats.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center accused BTS of “mocking the past” The band were dropped from a Japanese TV show last week after one of its members wore a T-shirt that appeared to celebrate the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Wearing a T-shirt in Japan mocking the victims of the … A-bomb, is just the latest incident of this band mocking the past,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Los Angeles-based centre, said in a statement.

Cooper referred to the release in early 2015 of teasers for a photo-book that showed a member of the band wearing a hat featuring the symbol of the Death’s Head Units – SS organisations that administered the Nazi concentration camps.

The statement also linked to images of band members posing at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin and to footage of them waving large flags on stage that were “eerily similar” to the Nazi swastika.

“It goes without saying that this group, which was invited to speak at the UN, owes the people of Japan and the victims of the Nazism an apology,” Cooper said.

“But that is not enough. It is clear that those designing and promoting this group’s career are too comfortable with denigrating the memory of the past. The result is that young generations in Korea and around the world are more likely to identify bigotry and intolerance as being ‘cool’ and help erase the lessons of history. The management of this group, not only the front performers, should publicly apologise.”

Last Friday, the Japanese network TV Asahi abruptly cancelled BTS’s scheduled appearance on its flagship Music Station show after being alerted to a photograph of Jimin, 23, wearing a T-shirt featuring a slogan celebrating Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in August 1945.

The words were accompanied by an image of a mushroom cloud generated by an exploding atomic bomb. Japan surrendered on 15 August that year, days after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

BTS, who have been described as the biggest boyband in the world, apologised to their Japanese fans for the cancellation but made no mention of the T-shirt. They have not publicly responded to Cooper’s criticism.

Lee Taek-gwang, a cultural critic, said the incidents were a symptom of modern South Korea’s struggle to reconcile strong nationalist sentiment with its growing international profile.

“BTS insist they are a global brand, but their identity is rooted in Korean nationalism, as it is with many young South Koreans,” said Lee, a professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, adding that nationalism continued to define the collective memory of Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula from 1910-45. “This isn’t just the case of a young band doing something stupid,” Lee said.

While overt support for the Nazis remained taboo in South Korea, the use of symbols associated with Nazism did not prompt the same level of outrage there as they did in many other countries, he said. “Young Koreans come across as liberal and cosmopolitan, but beneath the surface there are more reactionary factors at work.”

The cancellation of the band’s TV appearance came five months after they became the first K-pop band to top the Billboard 200 album chart with Love Yourself: Tear. Last week their ninth single in Japan, Fake Love/Airplane pt 2, was No 1 in the country’s Oricon daily singles chart.

The band, who won the music group award at the People’s Choice Awards in Los Angeles at the weekend, performed in Paris last month in front of the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, with whom they later posed for photos. They have also played to large audiences in London and New York.

The controversies come amid a sharp deterioration in relations between Tokyo and Seoul, where some politicians have accused the band’s Japanese critics of overreacting.

Noting that other TV stations were reconsidering planned appearances by BTS, a spokesman for the ruling Democratic party said it would be inappropriate to do so “on political grounds”.

The opposition Liberty Korea party voiced “deep regret towards Japan’s intolerant cultural relativism and insular historical awareness”, according to the Korea Herald.

More on this story

More on this story

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