Bizarre South Korean Advertisement Compares Women With Cows; Company Apologizes

Over the years, objectification of and stereotyping women, and normalization of gender inequality by the entertainment or marketing industry, especially in Asian countries, have been an aching reminder that sexism still runs deep in society. Viewers, especially the ones from South Korea, showed collective outrage against one such regressive stereotype that compared women with cows, prompting an apology from the business, CNN reported.

The advertisement by South Korea's biggest dairy company showed seemingly happy women suddenly transforming into cows, leaving people trying to find a shred of logic behind the bizarre projection.

Uploaded on the official YouTube channel of Seoul Milk on Nov. 29, the video starts with a man strolling down a forest path with a camera when he comes across a group of women in a field, and decides to secretly film them.

The women were shown doing yoga and drinking clear water, surrounded by pristine greenery. The voiceover talks about their diet and stress-free lifestyle. But when the man accidentally steps on a twig and startles the women, they all turn into cows and start mooing.

At the end of the ad, the voiceover says: "Clean water, organic feed, 100% pure Seoul Milk. Organic milk from an organic ranch in the pleasant nature of Cheongjang."

Take a look below:

The advertisement rubbed the viewers the wrong way and the makers faced quite the backlash. The video, which is less than a minute long, was removed from the streaming platform. However, it had already gone viral by that time and was re-uploaded on YouTube by other accounts.

There was an outrage over the insinuation that women are cows. But people also called out the video for normalizing the secret filming of women.

One user said the commercial was "molka plus misogyny." For those unaware, miniature cameras used to film women illegally are referred to as molkas in South Korea. Molkas are secretly installed to capture voyeuristic images and videos.

In the apology, the company said the advertisement has since been removed and they plan to scrutinize their future commercials to boot out any sexist projection of women.

"We sincerely apologize to everyone who may have felt uncomfortable due to the milk advertisement video uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Seoul Milk on the 29th of last month," Seoul Dairy Cooperative, the parent company of Seoul Milk, said in a statement on their website on December 8.

"We are taking the matter seriously and will take more careful measures to prevent similar problems from occurring in the future," the statement said, as per CNN.

This is not the first time the company sparked controversy with its misogynistic marketing strategy. According to Korea Herald, the company in 2003 rolled out an advertisement showing stark-naked women scraping yogurt off each other’s bodies as part of one of their product launch events.