By Kim Ja-young
Recently I began a friendship with a Jewish man. He is the first Jewish person I have met in my life. We talked about Korea and some other countries where he has lived or traveled.
While listening to his experiences in Korea I felt embarrassed when he talked about seeing a jazz bar in Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, which painted on its exterior wall a portrait of an infamous Nazi SS officer standing on a tank. Really? Could there actually be a Nazi bar in Mokpo?
This reminded me of Brian Deutsch's article, ``Insensitivity About Nazism," which appeared in the April 22, 2008, edition of The Korea Times in which he discussed a Nazi-themed cosmetics ad campaign in which a well-known Korean actress appeared dressed as a Nazi officer, holding a cap emblazoned with a Nazi style logo.
I recall seeing this ad on Youtube. In the background were the sounds of shell-firing rounds, the German language and the text ``Even Hitler could not get East and West at the same time." This Nazi-themed ad was hardly an issue in Korean society and was largely ignored by the Korean media.
Frankly, when I watched this ad with my friend, we just laughed. Even though the commercial showed Nazi propaganda or made mention of Adolph Hitler, I don't think it bothered most Korean people's conscience, including mine. Surely, most Koreans have sympathy for Jewish people because we suffered similar cruelties by the Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation. I believe that when pressed, most Koreans would express having bad or negative feelings about Hitler or Nazism or fascism in general. However, the problem is that we don't appear to have much interest in people's business or problems other than our own.
I recall that my friend and I talked about what it would have been like if the actress in the above-mentioned ad had dressed in a colonial Japanese military style and the sentence was ``Even Ito Hirobumi, who was the biggest culprit behind the Japanese colonization of Korea, could not get all of Asia." At the very least, the following day the cosmetic company headquarters would have been egg-bombed by protesters, I reckon.
It is interesting that a Nazi-themed advertisement was not controversial until it stirred up discontent by expatriates living in Korea. It is surprising and shameful that after being chastised in the international news, neither the Korean cosmetics company nor the ad agency apologized and excused their actions stating they just wanted to highlight the ``revolutionary" aspects of Hitler.
I felt badly when my friend described to me that Japan treated Koreans as inferior or lesser people, while the Nazis thought Jewish people were vermin or insects and not even worthy of human description. I felt sympathy when he talked to me about how his mother was the last person in her family to have a certain family name. He asked if I could imagine if after World War II, I was the only person left with the last name ``Kim?" I felt terrible when he told to me that he could not travel to Germany because of the subconscious fear it brought up in him. I felt sadly because he could not visit Berlin and enjoy the most beautiful modern city I have ever seen.
After coming to know him and trying to understand his history and identity, I realized how the Nazi-themed cosmetics ad was an insult to the memory of the victims of the Nazi holocaust. If the ad agency insists that they want to symbolize the ``revolutionary" aspects of Hitler and the Nazi movement, they are ignorant and inhumane.
If the cosmetic company states that they did not know what the Nazi-styled cap logo meant and did not feel that there is any support for Nazism in the ad, they are lost. If the proprietors are thinking that a Nazi jazz bar seems cool, I suggest they try opening a ``Hirobumi Bar" or ``Japanese Colonial Theme Bar." How cool would that be?
I don't think this issue is just about insensitivity toward Nazism, but highlights our insensitivity about our place in the world. To be a more global people, our children are being asked to change even their Korean names to English nicknames at English camps.
What sense does this make? Globalization would mean becoming a responsible member of the world and sensitive to lives and feelings of the community's other members. It doesn't require becoming a fluent English speaker with an English nickname.
As a Korean and friend of a Jewish person and member of this global village, I want to apologize about the Nazi-themed cosmetics advertisement and bars that feature Nazi imagery here in Korea. I hope my apology will be considered acceptable.
The writer is a radiation oncology resident at Bundang Cha Hospital. She can be reached at hontas0809@hotmail.com.