In TVXQ’s latest music video, a woman on TV is shown standing in front of a world map that depicts an airplane making a journey from South Korea. However, the map was missing Japan, causing the group’s label to take down the video and make a correction.
Here is how the sequence originally appeared in TVXQ’s “Love Line” video.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/980842571084648450
Where is Japan? pic.twitter.com/rbGnowvH8o
— ゆう (@yuco0815) April 2, 2018
Uh…
K-pop fans seemed surprised by the omission.
OMG SM WTF JAPAN IS LIKE TVXQ'S SECOND HOME OMG https://t.co/IEZq7dPqxD
— jeanne.bsky.social 🪼¹⁶ commissions open 📌 (@jiyean__) April 3, 2018
Whaattt TVXQ is really big in Japan. How could they forget thattttt https://t.co/QxwTdFKeHf
— •🦋 Z E C 🦋• (@kwonjiyonged) April 3, 2018
Oh god…out of all the countries to forget on a map on a TVXQ vid it had to be Japan. Good job SM. https://t.co/LwFevRtgx7
— tams (@PMOsechill) April 3, 2018
so careless hehe japan is basically where they get the most money wit tvxq lol https://t.co/XQ68ocFHZD
— RUBY & GWANDO enjoyer (@taeyongraps) April 3, 2018
It was later corrected so that Japan was included on the world map.
According to WoW Korea, the group’s label SM Entertainment issued the following statement: “We determined that this mistake was CG editing problem by the production company FantazyLab. We are truly sorry that to those who experience uncomfortable feelings and that we didn’t check it in advance.”
This isn’t the first time of late that Japan has been left out on a Korean created world map. Earlier this year, for example, South Korea’s Winter Olympic map also did not include Japan
TVXQ! is massively popular in Japan, where it’s known as Tohoshinki and releases music in Japanese, so while online commenters might allege that their country was left out on purpose, I certainly doubt the group’s members had any knowledge of this oversight until it was too late.
tbh i dont think this was intentional lol. that would be seriously stupid considering tvxq's popularity & reputation in japan
— 𝓷𝓲𝓷𝓲♪ ⋆♱⋆𝓯𝓪𝓷 𝓪𝓬𝓬 (@clubcolde) April 3, 2018
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