Wiesenthal Center blasts Nazi-themed cosmetics ad in S. Korea

A leading anti-Semitism watchdog group called Friday for a South Korean cosmetics company to halt an ad campaign with Nazi references.

The television ad for a skin lotion made by Coreana Cosmetics Co. shows a young woman in a short skirt and military-style trench coat, holding a soldier's cap at her side that appears to have the swastika-gripping eagle Nazi insignia. Background noises of an explosion and crowds cheering in response to a man's unintelligible speech are heard.

An earlier version shown in previews and posted on the Web contained the slogan: "Even Hitler didn't have the East and West."

The Los Angeles, California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement that it sent a letter to company leaders calling for the ad campaign to be withdrawn, citing the Nazi imagery and Hitler slogan.

"These images and references are [an] insult to the memory of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust," the center's associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper wrote. "Survivors of those atrocities are outraged that their suffering at the hand of these racist murderers is being mocked by such a campaign.

However, company spokesman Kim Yoon-oh said the slogan has already changed to: "No one has ever had the East and West." The phrase was meant to boast of the product's dual moisturizing and calming effects.

The company said it had not received the Wiesenthal Center complaint, but Kim said concerns of potential controversy prompted the slogan change before the ad began airing in February.

The commercial still features the same militaristic imagery, but Kim said Coreana was not aware of the Nazi-style logo on the model's cap. He said the costume was selected by a stylist affiliated with Korad, a Seoul-based firm that produced the commercial.

A Korad official, Seo Sang-hee, confirmed the ad was meant to invoke a Nazi soldier and Hitler, which she said symbolize revolution in keeping with the lotion's revolutionary dual functions.

Seo said the commercial was not designed to promote Hitler, but rather the idea that the cosmetics will succeed in both East and West, which Hitler failed to do.

Last year, a South Korean publisher agreed to rewrite a best-selling children's book on U.S. history after the Wiesenthal Center criticized it for containing messages that echoed Nazi propaganda.

The center has previously protested uses of Nazi themes in Korean bars and nightclubs.