Popular Korean Band Whose Japan Performance Was Cancelled For T-Shirt Mocking A-Bomb Victims, Once Posed With Nazi SS Death Head Symbols, Flew Nazi-Like Flags At Concert

November 11, 2018

The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced BTS, an internationally popular Korean band whose live performance on Japan TV was cancelled.

“Wearing a T-shirt in Japan mocking the victims of the Nagasaki A-bomb, is just the latest incident of this band mocking the past,” charged Rabbi Abraham Cooper. Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO.

Members of the band posed for a photo shoot wearing hats with the Nazi SS Death Head logo. The SS was a key component of the Nazi mass murder of 6 million Jews during the WWII Holocaust. “Flags appearing on stage at their concert were eerily similar to the Nazi Swastika. It goes without saying that this group, which was invited to speak at the UN, owes the people of Japan and the victims of the Nazism an apology.”

“But that is not enough. It is clear that those designing and promoting this group’s career are too comfortable with denigrating the memory of the past. The result is that on young generations in Korea and around the world are more likely to identify bigotry and intolerance as being ‘cool’ and help erase the lessons of history. The management of this group, not only the front performers, should publicly apologize,” Rabbi Cooper added.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/world/asia/bts-kpop-japan-cancel.html

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).