Korean Government’s Promotional Content Sparks Massive Row Over Blackface Usage

A South Korean city government is facing massive flak for using blackface in its promotional video.

Recently, the official YouTube channel of Gumi City in North Gyeongsang Province posted a video to promote the city’s ramyeon festival, held from Friday to Saturday. In the video, actors dressed as characters from the beloved Korean classic cartoon Dooly the Little Dinosaur sing a song celebrating ramyeon.

Among them is an aspiring singer named Michael, a character modeled after Michael Jackson. Despite the character being Korean, he is depicted with darker skin in the original animation. In the Gumi city promotional video, the actor portraying Michael is seen wearing dark brown face paint, an exaggeratedly drawn lip, and an afro wig.

The video has sparked outrage internationally as netizens accused Gumi city of promoting blackface. Many Korean nationals agreed with the criticism, urging the city to take down the video and issue a formal apology.

Comment
byu/nospacehead from discussion
inLiving_in_Korea

• “No matter how popular a character was, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a demeaning portrayal of Black people. Saying “it was fine back then” doesn’t hold up at all now. The excuse “I didn’t know then” cannot be a pardon. Today, there are plenty of ways to learn for yourself, so remaining uninformed is just willful ignorance. Racism is never acceptable for any reason. Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

A viewer even stated that they had filed a formal complaint with the city government and the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the country’s largest human rights institution. The NHRCK referred the case to Gumi city, but according to the complainant, the city government refused to remove or even review the video.

Gumi city is yet to respond directly to the criticism.