DHC's baloney

Japanese cosmetics maker should be driven out of markets

DHC, a Japanese cosmetics maker notorious for its anti-Korean TV channel, has issued a self-excusing statement full of sophistries and factual distortions. By doing so, the company revealed once again it lacks a minimum of basic ethics as a business entity.

DHC TV, the company's YouTube channel, released a public notice Wednesday, which was far from an apology but closer to a declaration. The channel claimed South Korean media's criticism of it was "impressionist criticism" and that products and media should be two separate things. It then said, "We can't help but express concerns that the boycott campaign passing the bounds of common sense is a blockade of the free press."

The TV channel is brazen-faced by posing itself as a media outlet, after insulting the statue of a "comfort woman" with demeaning words and publicly airing the fake news that "Japan standardized the Korean alphabet of Hangeul to take the current form." It was also a grave provocation that the Tokyo-based channel presented an ultra-right novelist as a panelist even after its Korean offshoot, DHC Korea, issued a public apology. A co-panelist described Korean people's boycott campaign as "childish behavior." Are they entitled to claim press freedom with this hate speech?

DHC Group Chairman Yoshiaki Yoshida is one of the businessmen infamous for making ultra-right comments. Three years ago, he told ethnic Koreans in Japan, "Pseudo-Japanese should return to the country they are from." After DHC TV was disciplined for infringing on human rights last year, he also said, "I am worried because there are too many Koreans with anti-Japanese thoughts living in Japan."

The fact that a business corporation that should act responsibly is running such a TV channel discloses Japanese society's low level of awareness about human rights, disgracing the whole nation.

In Korea, DHC's products are disappearing from both online and offline markets, and its advertising model, Jung Yumi, has declared she would no longer work for the company while requesting it to stop using her image. There is no other way to punish an arrogant company but to show consumers' power. Goodbye, DHC.