BTS agency subsidiary apologizes for Sowon's flirting with Nazi dummy near Holocaust memorial day

MANILA, Philippines — The managers of GFriend issued an apology after the K-pop girl band's leader Sowon was pictured hugging a mannequin dressed in a Nazi-era German army uniform.

Images taken during a video shoot at a European-themed cafe in Paju, north of Seoul, showed the 25-year-old embracing the dummy, her eyes closed and with a dreamy smile.

In her Instagram account, Sowon posted a series of photos of herself posing affectionately with a life-size statue wearing a Nazi uniform.

The uniform seen on the statue was worn by Nazi soldiers during World War II. The jacket and collar feature patches denoting rank while the artillery uniform cap is designed with a Swastika badge.

The post, however, was deleted minutes after posting.

Twitter user @koozdolls, who is Jewish, posted the screenshot of the photos, asking the K-pop star to apologize.

“I'm disappointed of s0won but i'm glad she deleted. She needs to apologize tho. Nazis are not friends or someone you can hug or look so lovingly at, they are killers, they killed 6 million Jews out of them 1.5 million Jewish children /srs,” @koozdolls wrote.

“To everyone who’s defending sowon with 'koreans don’t know, etc' here is me talking to my KOREAN dad who went to school in KOREA whether he knows about the holocaust. he clearly knows and learned what the holocaust is. so stop excusing this,” another Twitter user, @cheolca, wrote.

The photos triggered outrage online after Sowon posted them over the weekend.

"It's not difficult to avoid situations like this," said one Twitter poster. "Some issues are too broad to be ignorant (of)."

Sowon deleted the photos "right after she learnt of the implications" of her action and felt "heavy responsibility," her agency Source Music said.

The managers added they had "failed to recognise the issue with the mannequin's uniform."

"We apologise that we didn't pay enough attention to historical facts and social issues," they said in a statement on Monday. 

"We bow our heads in apology for anyone offended by our contents." 

Six-member GFriend made their debut in 2015 and have enjoyed several years' success in the cut-throat K-pop industry, releasing three studio albums. 

The owner of the cafe where the photos were taken, a military history buff who declined to be identified by name, told AFP the uniform was that of "a second lieutenant in a German army tank unit during World War II."

The display was not "intended to glorify National Socialism," he added, but was part of his research for a book on the history of military uniforms. 

"I also have mannequins dressed in uniforms for the Allied Forces in World War II on show, including the US and UK," he said.

Awareness of Europe's World War II atrocities can be limited in Asia, where Nazi iconography is sometimes displayed in ignorance of what it symbolizes. 

Sowon's photos were posted just a few days after the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust last January 27.

This is not the first time a K-pop group has garnered criticism over the use of Nazi-era items.

Source Music is a subsidiary of Big Hit Entertainment, the management agency of global megastars BTS, who were embroiled in controversy in 2018 as images circulated of a concert where the septet wore uniforms and waved flags that critics said recalled Nazi symbols.

Band leader RM was also pictured in a cap bearing an SS Death's Head logo in a 2014 photoshoot.

The SS played a key role in the Nazi mass murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and a prominent Jewish human rights group accused the band of "mocking the past."

At the time, Big Hit issued an extensive, 1,000-word statement in Korean, English and Japanese, repeatedly offering its "sincerest apologies." — Reports from Agence France-Presse