Vinay Menon: Chaeyoung’s swastika T-shirt shows K-pop stars need stylists who can guard against offensive garments

It might be time for K-pop stars to hire new stylists.

You know, someone who is familiar with our symbols of hate. Someone who can say, “Please do not wear those booty shorts with Pepe the Frog on the back. Also, that necklace with the dice that add up to ‘1488’ is code for white supremacists. Maybe just go with the emerald earrings that do not translate into Heil Hitler?”

Chaeyoung is a 23-year-old singer in the South Korean girl band TWICE. It’s an appropriate name. In recent days, Chaeyoung has TWICE worn offensive attire.

The first was a cropped tank emblazoned with the QAnon symbol and partial rendering of “Where we go one, we go all.” It sounds innocuous. Until you realize this is the slogan of a cult that believes the world is secretly run by a cabal of blood-guzzling pedophiles who use pizzerias and Wayfair armoires for sex trafficking.

So not a great outfit to wear — unless you are performing at a Trump rally.

Then on Tuesday, Chaeyoung posted on Instagram to her eight million followers. In the photo, she is perched in a restaurant booth, pulling down her sunglasses with both hands and looking to her left. What a shame she didn’t look down. She would have seen the T-shirt pulled over her polka-dot blouse contained a stylized image of Sid Vicious who, in turn, was wearing a T-shirt with a swastika. Meta oops.

As her fans toggled into WTF mode, Chaeyoung deleted the post and warbled in the universal key of contrite: “I sincerely apologize regarding the Instagram post. I didn’t correctly recognize the meaning of the tilted swastika in the t-shirt I wore.”

Is her stylist Kanye West?

I will extend the benefit of doubt. But I’m also confused as to why K-pop and antisemitism keep periodically overlapping in a periodic Venn diagram. On Wednesday, the Guardian itemized other examples of “Nazi logo controversy in the K-pop world.”

This included a member of BTS wearing an SS hat in 2018. Three years later, a member of the group GFriend apologized after she was photographed “hugging and caressing” a Nazi mannequin. There was the time a member of Purple Kiss also wore a swastika.

Last year, the boy band Epex changed song lyrics after they were “seen as referencing the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany.” This followed the band Pritz wearing red and white armbands. They also said my bad, claiming ignorance, and said the “logos were inspired by traffic signage.”

We are not racist. We just love the yield sign!

K-pop has become a global phenomenon. BTS is basically the Beatles, circa 1964. TWICE’s new mini-album, “Ready to Be,” landed on the Billboard 200 this month at No. 2, sandwiched between Morgan Wallen and Miley Cyrus. Eyes and ears across the world are now pointed at South Korea. All the more reason for the country’s pop stars to not accidentally leave the house in KKK hoodies.

When TWICE was feted with the Breakthrough Award this month at Billboard’s Women in Music gala, they told the magazine: “We are ready to show more of our beautiful inner side to the world and ready to show more of ourselves.”

Fantastic. Maybe don’t show the world your closets just yet.

My God, is that a silhouette of Ted Bundy on Momo’s turtleneck?

In her mea culpa this week, Chaeyoung wrote: “I deeply apologize for not thoroughly reviewing it, causing concern. I will pay absolute attention in the future to prevent any situation similar from happening again. Sincerely apologize again.”

I feel for her. I do. But this is what happens when cultures collide and young superstars from abroad are left to thrift shop their own attire on far-right eBay. Missy, that glittering miniskirt with the blue, star-filled Xs on a red background is not cute. That’s the Confederate Flag. And in this market, that is a giant nope for wardrobe. You’d be less scandalous singing “Moonlight Sunrise” in a G-string and pasties.

Young people on this continent now take perverse pride in not knowing anything that happened before they were born. It drives me crazy. That said, how can we expect young people from other parts of the world to anticipate a tie-dyed hoodie with a winking Richard Spencer flashing the OK sign is going to cause blowback?

K-pop is storming the planet. Now K-pop is in dire need of a team of culturally sensitive stylists who can stand guard against offensive garments. That bedazzled geometric T-shirt with “Trump Won” might not mean anything in Seoul. But it’s not going to go over well inside Madison Square Garden. No. NO! You absolutely cannot wear that blazer with a profile of Heinrich Himmler stitched into the lapel.

Chaeyoung has apologized for dining and apparently glancing at the Daily Specials board, unaware a swastika was emblazoned over her heart. She might also want to google Sid Vicious, but that’s a different story. This story is a clarion call to K-pop: If the goal is crossover success, if the aim is to amplify streaming and downloads from Warsaw to Toronto, hire a stylist who will steer you away from problematic getups.

Chaeyoung is not a monster. She’s just young and naive, as we all were once.

She needs a few grown-ups who understand the world before she was born.

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