Dairy firm accused of ‘molka’ crime over video depicting women as cows in South Korea
- Advert by Seoul Dairy Cooperative features a man with a camera creeping up on a group of women doing yoga, who then transform into cows and moo loudly
- The firm has apologised, but this is not its first controversy. In 2003, one of its promotional events featured naked women daubing each other’s bodies with yogurt
The offending 53 second video by Seoul Dairy Cooperative begins with a man wandering through the countryside with a camera, before the viewer is led to assume he has happened upon a herd of cows.
A male voice-over says: “We finally succeeded in capturing them on camera at a pristine place … They drink clean water from pure nature, insist on an eco-friendly organic diet, and live peacefully in a pleasant environment. I will try to approach them cautiously.”
Hiding in bushes, the man starts filming what is then revealed to be a group of women drinking from a stream and doing yoga. The man then accidentally steps on a twig, startling the women who look up before transforming into black and white milk cows and mooing loudly.
The advert concludes with the message: “Clean water, organic feed, 100 per cent pure Seoul Milk. Organic milk from an organic ranch in pleasant nature.”
A huge social media backlash forced the firm to remove the advert from its YouTube channel last week, just days after it first appeared.
Internet users accused the firm of committing a “molka” crime (secretly filming women without their consent) – something that in recent years has become an increasingly major social issue in the country.