Activist blasts Nike over Rising Sun flag-designed sneakers

By Lee Kyung-min

A professor at a university in Korea has sent a letter of protest to key executives at Nike about its iconic Michael Jordan shoes, calling for the sportswear giant to stop using the Japanese Rising Sun flag as a design on its sneakers.

Professor Seo Kyoung-duk at Sungshin Women’s University, who is also a dedicated Dokdo campaigner, said Thursday that he sent the letter to Nike President and CEO Mark Parker, Vice President for Design Tinker Hatfield, six other executives of the company and also Jordan.

He said the multinational market player and its high-profile shoes should consider the overwhelming impact of its products on young people worldwide.

This is the third time for the company to use the flag’s design on their shoes, a symbol of Japan’s militarism and imperialism in the late 19th and 20th centuries, despite criticism here in Korea, with the previous incidents occurring in 2009 and 2013.

“I wanted to let the company know what it did was wrong and why,” he said. “I would like to encourage the executives to avoid making the same mistakes in the future by helping them realize their insensitivity, indifference, and ignorance of historical facts.”

Alongside the letter, he sent a picture and video footage in English explaining that Japan’s Rising Sun flag symbolizes Japan’s wartime atrocities like the Hakenkreuz, or swastika, the symbol used by the Nazi Party in Germany.

His letter comes after criticism against the design of the company’s latest model of Air Jordan 12 Retro, the Master sneakers released here in late February.

Following a barrage of public protest on the website and campaigns to boycott the product, Nike quickly withdrew plans to sell similar models here.

Withdrawing sales, though, is not enough, Seo said.

“An overwhelming number of consumers across the world are purchasing the sneakers, and many of them do not know the design resembles the Rising Sun flag,” he said.

Earlier in 2009, people in Korea boycotted the Nike Air Jordan Rising Sun sneakers, and in 2013, they also boycotted the Air Jordan Gamma, which had a product description on the company’s official website saying, “the Japanese Rising Sun flag.”