Fury over controversial milk advertisement depicting women as cows

The fine line between creativity and controversy was breached by South Korea’s largest dairy company, Seoul Milk.

The food and dairy cooperative has released an apology letter for depicting women as cows in the controversial advertisement released on 29 November.

Women as cows

The commercial triggered a public outcry and debate about sexism in the country.

Seoul Milk's parent company Seoul Dairy Cooperative said in a statement on its official website on 8 December:

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.

But depicting them as cows wasn’t the only unethical thing about the ad. It also showed a man secretly videotaping the women, an all too common practice in South Korea, which has officially been named due to its rampancy. Molkas are miniature cameras secretly and illegally being installed to capture photos and videos of people without their knowledge.

Public backlash

The promo, which has since been deleted from Seoul Milk's official YouTube channel, shows a guy in the countryside in Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon province, with a camera, capturing women in white clothes stretching in the meadows.

The voice-over narrated:

We finally succeeded in capturing their images in a place where nature has been kept clean. We decided to approach them cautiously, who're drinking clean water from clean nature, eating organic diet, and living peacefully in a pleasant environment.

The man steps on a twig and the women turn into cows.

Watch the video below.

Viewers took to social media and highlighted the patriarchal and predatory undertones that still exist in the society.

Users on YouTube expressed their astonishment, leaving comments like, ‘it makes me sick,’ or ‘this is too much.’