Nothing says cosmetics like Nazis, and nothing says Nazi like another crass case of a Korean entity using the Third Reich images (or in this case imagery) for commercial profit. The latest edition comes from the Korean makeup company Coreana, who for a new line of facial oil is using the sleek, sexy image of what would appear to be a woman chilling on Adolph’s desk at Adlerhorst while WWII rages behind her.
Seriously, what planet are these people living on?
Here’s a video from Brian in Jeollanam-do:
Written in Hangul (written Korean) says something to the effect of “Even Hitler didn’t have the East and West,” I guess insinuating that this new moisturizer does.
You can find another video on Brian’s site. This story is getting out there. Here’s a piece from CNN.
Actually my wife (a chemical engineer) did her undergrad internship at Coreana. To my knowledge she’s not a Nazi, though she does often surprise me. I’ll keep everyone posted on further developments.
Also: the set design and especially the fog reminds me of Aleksandr Sokurov’s Moloch, a fantastic film approximating a surreal evening at Hitler’s haus. I’d even go so far as to say the director of the Coreana commercial has seen the film and is evoking it.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Gus Lonzo // Apr 5, 2008 at 1:39 pm
This “provocative” commercial betrays a level of immaturity and amateurishness (not to mention insensitivity) that you rarely encounter outside of the high shcool, or perhaps even the middle school. That is, these sorts of ads remind me of that breed of adolescent who fancies himself a brilliant, artistic, misunderstood, edgy, etc., fella because oh, I don’t know, he’s read some Nietzsche let’s say, and in his attempt to convince others that he’s just such a person, he goes around saying some really offensive things, all in the name of “free speech” or even worse, “art.” It may sound trite, but the folks behind this commercial simply need to grow up. It’s a big world out there afterall.
2 Brian // Apr 5, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Man, you see that quote from the Korad woman? From the CNN article:
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.
. . .
They couldn’t have chosen a Korean revolutionary? Or they couldn’t have chosen . . . I dunno, Rain or Kim Byung-hyung as somebody who failed to succeed in both east and west? *zing*
There are times like this when I’m truly afraid of who my neighbors here are . . .
3 Shinsano // Apr 5, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Worse are the quotes on your site…the emails from Coreana asking you to take the videos down.
4 simon // Apr 5, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Koreans must sure see the parallels between Imperial Japan and the Nazi regime, wonder where the major differentiation is here. Though I’m sure White people on another continent are a lot less real to them than a former brutal colonizer on their homeland (though the strategic location of the Korean peninsula, like Okinawan Ryukyu Kingdom, means that these nations were constantly under threat from most neighbours.)
5 Shinsano // Apr 6, 2008 at 9:04 am
I hate to get into too much generalizing here, speaking for all of one race or another, but I would say, by in large, this connection is not made by a lot of Koreans. I think that’s what really riles foreigners living in Korea. That Koreans can be so indignant about the crimes of the Japanese on their own race, yet utterly ignorant about similar (and arguably much worse) crimes against others.
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