K-Pop Band Draws Criticism for Logo’s Similarity to Nazi Symbol

A screen capture of a tweet from user with Twitter TWTR +4.52% handle @nyangteam shows the members of South Korean K-pop music act Pritz, wearing armbands with a design many Twitter users say is reminiscent of a swastika band from Nazi Germany.

—Twitter

A little-known K-pop girl group has courted controversy after performing with red armbands that many on social media say is reminiscent of the Nazi swastika flag.

Performing at a horse racetrack earlier this month, the group, Pritz, wore black dresses and red bands around their left arms. The bands had a while circle in the middle and an x-shaped black cross inside it.

An official at Pandagram, the agency responsible for the band, on Thursday rejected the comparison, saying “the thought never occurred” to the agency before the performance. The logo was inspired by traffic signs for speed limits, where numbers are written in black in the middle of a white circle, wrapped around by a band of red. The four ends of the cross were in the shape of arrowheads, symbolizing their ambitions “to expand without a limit in four directions,” the Pandagram official added.

A speed limit sign

—Reuters

The response on Twitter has been mostly negative, with many saying the wardrobe choice was offensive.  A Twitter user with the handle @gong062 said Pritz’s armband logo was more similar to the flag used by Hungary’s Arrow Cross Party, an extremist political group that sympathized with the theory of racial purity and ruled the country for a few months from late 1944. Its leaders were tried as war criminals by the Soviet Union after the end of World War II.

The Pandagram official said the agency is studying the possibility of changing the logo.

Controversies involving Nazi symbols have taken place in other parts of Asia in recent years. Owners of an Italian restaurant in New Taipei City, Taiwan, apologized earlier this year after their German-sausage dish named “Long Live the Nazis“ became a public scandal.  The owners said at the time that they didn’t know it would spark such an uproar.

In Thailand in 2011, school students in Chiang Mai in surprised teachers and parents with a march of students in SS guard costumes and swastika banners. A Japanese discount chain in 2010 discontinued its Nazi-style party outfits after a complaint from a U.S.-based Jewish organization.

Owners of an Italian restaurant in New Taipei City, Taiwan, apologized earlier this year after their German-sausage dish named “Long Live the Nazis” became a public scandal. An earlier version of this article incorrectly called the dish “Love Live the Nazi.”

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