Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Maxim Korea blasted for lurid cover
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Maxim U.S. magazine has denounced Maxim Korea’s controversial September cover, which features a photo that strongly suggests a murder.
A Maxim U.S. spokesperson said the cover was “deeply troubling,” and strongly condemned the cover in a statement to The Huffington Post.
Maxim Korea’s cover has been severely criticized. In the photo, actor Kim Byung-ok _ well known for playing villains in movies such as “Old Boy” and “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” _ stands in front of a car, from which a woman’s legs tied by duct tape protrude from the half-open trunk.
Maxim Korea said the concept was “The Real Bad Guy” and that “Girls like bad guys? This is a real bad guy. Are you dying to love it?”
/Screen captures from online community
The cover has prompted an online petition calling for the magazine to pull the issue from newsstands. The petition has almost 10,000 signatures.
In response, Maxim Korea said it had “no problem” with the cover, because although it depicted a heinous crime such as murder and abandonment of a body, it did not depict a sex crime.
A Maxim Korea editor also posted a statement on the magazine’s official Facebook page, saying, “If we had wanted to glorify sex crimes, we would have put So Ji-sub for the cover instead of Kim.”
The statement was deleted almost immediately.