KOREAN actress Park Jin Hee is clad in what appears to be a Nazi-inspired military uniform.

Sirens wail in the background.

German voices fill the air.

A bomb explodes, rattling a painting that hangs on the wall.

Raucous cheers resound.

Then comes this message: 'Even Hitler didn't have the East and West.'

This is the first half of a 30-second skincare commercial by South Korean brand Coreana for its new product, a skin treatment ampoule.

The ad, leaked on the Internet earlier this year, drew a storm of protest, mostly from outside South Korea, for its Nazi references.

Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, was responsible for the deaths of more than six million people, including Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, during World War II.

Both the Israeli Embassy in Seoul and the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organisation, protested to Coreana and asked for the ad to be withdrawn, reported the Associated Press.

Korad, the Korean agency that produced the advertisement, explained that the ad and the Hitler reference symbolised 'revolution' - which mirrored the lotion's 'revolutionary' moisturising and calming effects.

It added that the 'East-West' reference highlighted the product's dual functions.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center disagreed.

In his letter to Coreana, he called Hitler a 'mass murderer' and said the advertisement is an 'insult to the memory of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust'.

Coreana apologised and changed its slogan to 'No one has ever had the East and West', without altering the advertisement's content, before it was shown on South Korean TV.

Later on 16 Apr, the company withdrew the campaign altogether 'to prevent further controversy', its spokesman told Associated Press.

STILL CIRCULATING

But a clip of the advertisement continues to be circulated among bloggers.

The popular Popseoul forum posted the clip last week with the title 'What the hell was Coreana thinking?'

Most of the mainstream media in Korea did not pursue the story - only English dailies did.

Actress Jin Hee, 30, who is best known for her dramas Come Back, Soon Ae and War Of Money, also did not come out to clarify her stand on the issue.

This is not South Korea's first brush with Nazi controversy.

Nazi-themed bars are reportedly cult favourites in the country.

Last year, a South Korean publisher of a chart-topping children's book on US history had to rewrite some of its content after it was criticised for 'containing messages that echoed Nazi propaganda'.

Mr Brian Deutsch, who teaches English in Suncheon, South Korea, wrote to The Korea Times saying he feels the country 'truly and horribly underestimates the impact the Nazis had in their day, and the influence they have had on the global consciousness'.

US blogger Joshua Stanton, a lawyer who once practised in Korea, wrote on his blog that South Korea's 'affinity' to the Nazis is 'odd', given its 'obsession with its own history of being oppressed by Adolf Hitler's fascist Japanese ally'.

He added: 'This latest episode suggests that Koreans really don't see the tastelessness of this.'

This article was first published in The New Paper on Apr 30, 2008.