South Korea’s biggest dairy brand was forced to apologize for an advert that depicted women as cows.
The video by Seoul Milk shows a man secretly filming a group of women in a field, who later turn into cows. After public backlash the company removed to video.
The behaviour of the man in the video was compared to “molka”, the illegal practice of secretely filming people.
“We sincerely apologise to everyone who felt uncomfortable with the milk commercial released on 29th last month,” Seoul Milk’s parent company Seoul Dairy Cooperative said in an apology posted online.
“We are accepting this matter seriously and will conduct an internal review, and take extra care to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. We bow our heads in apology,” it added.
The clip starts with a man with a camera wandering through the countryside.
“We finally managed to capture them on camera in a place of pristine cleanliness,” a male voice-over says.
This is then followed by the man, hidden in bushes, filming a group of women drinking from a stream and doing yoga.
When the man accidentally steps on a twig it startles the women who suddenly turn into cows.
The advert ends with the words “Clean water, organic feed, 100% pure Seoul Milk. Organic milk from an organic ranch in the pleasant nature of Cheongyang.”
The advert sparked a national debate over sexism and gender sensitivity as well as raising concerns over the man secretly filming a group of women, with spy camera crimes in South Korea having risen in the last few years.
Sources: BBC, Daily Mail
Follow FiND iT on Facebook here.
ALSO READ: Here is the new retirement system proposed for South Africa
