SNSD’s Album Release Date Postponed to June 29th
Here's LOLcakes with the news:
Due to the Controversy over SNSD's Album cover for their highly anticipated mini-album, SM Entertainment have postponed its release to the 29th of June.
SM Entertainment said "We used military icons on album cover, however it was interpreted and understood in a way we didn't expected. So we are planning to delete the part and put an icon of Korean supersonic jet T-50."(cr: bossa747@soshified)
While the girls' album release may be postponed, their appearance on Music Bank this Friday is not with the group starting their promotions for the song "Tell Me Your Wish (Genie)". The song "Etude" from the album will still be released on the 25th, but all other songs will be released online on the new date.
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Certain special circumstances have given birth to a special post: a collaboration article! Following LOLcakes concise, factual news reporting about the issue, samlet is here to give a long-winded, rambling opinion that attempts to explain the Korean netizen mindset to all of you foreign readers. Enjoy the dichotomy.
The first main netizen beef with the album cover is the aforementioned similarity between the cover's fighter plane and Japan's kamikaze-era Zero-sen fighter planes:
The Japanese flag's signature sun on the S♥NE fighter's wing provides some strong evidence for the netizens' claims. This controversy is pretty justified, as Japanese-Korean relations during WWII are a touchy subject in South Korea to this day, mostly due to Japanese long-term denial that many war crimes ever happened (it was impossible to find a completely non-biased news article on this, apologies to any that are offended). No matter what happened during WWII, it's still shameful for a plane to represent both S♥NE fandom and kamikaze attacks.
The second netizen beef is with the girls' outfits - particularly the hat & badges, which some see as resembling Nazi military regalia:
Credit to pswfps@abletoknow
While many militaries use eagle emblems and similarly shaped hats, the netizens do seem to have a point here, as the eagle emblems on SNSD's hats and the Nazi hats share a strong likeness in both position and shape. Contrast both of those hats to this regular US military cadet hat:
Credit to collectors-badges.com
and you'll see why Korean netizens (who, like all celebrity followers, pounce on any potential controversy) have made such a commotion over this issue. Well, I'm not exactly an expert on the history of WWII-airplanes and military hats, but it seems to me that SM made a sensible decision in pulling the cover, even if it meant delaying the release of the album for a couple of days. To the disappointed S♥NEs, surely a couple of days of waiting is worth the severed connections between your favorite group, kamikazes, and Nazis. It's just a shame that whoever foresaw the design of the album cover didn't do their research, as both SNSD and SM look bad in the face of all this hullaballoo. S♥NEs just want to tell one wish to their group of genies: that the upcoming MV, comeback, and mini-album can erase the negativity of this whole debacle.
23 Jun 2009 - 03:23 AM
1. emorella
nooo! why?! don’t postpone the release! :/ well, at least they’re not postponing the comeback performance. -sigh-
hehe. and i finally get to say this: first. <3