A leading Jewish human rights group has denounced popular K-pop band BTS, whose live performance on Japanese TV was canceled last week, over a T-shirt mocking victims of the atomic bombing of Japan and for a photo shoot that showed them wearing hats with a Nazi logo.
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center blasted BTS in a statement released Sunday.
“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,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action with the center, said in a statement.
“It goes without saying that this group, which was invited to speak at the U.N., owes the people of Japan and the victims of the Nazism an apology,” Cooper said.
“But that is not enough,” he added. “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 … 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.”