On the May 10 episode of 'Bo-ra! Deborah', Yoo In Na's character 'Yeon Bo-ra' had a dialogue with 'Lee Soo-hyuk' (actor Yoon Hyun Min).
In 'Bo-ra! Deborah', Yoo In Na plays 'Yeon Bo-ra', Korea's number-one love coach and columnist.
The problematic sequence was where 'Yeon Bo-ra' stressed the importance of self-care to 'Lee Soo-hyuk'.
In telling 'Lee Soo-hyuk' how important it is to take care of one's appearance, 'Yeon Bo-ra' relates an anecdote of Auschwitz survivors.
The line is as follows:
"At the Auschwitz concentration camp, the prisoners died lying on their own excrement. Even then, some people washed their faces using half of their one allocated cup of water, and shaved beards reflecting their faces on the back of the food tray. Those are the ones who survived. I mean, taking care of your looks and dressing up is a matter of survival. It's a survival method for singles."
i can't believe writers came up with this and everyone in the process approved it. out of all the analogies you could've made...ignorance is scary https://t.co/oLm7BjvolL pic.twitter.com/GAfDte3Nzk
— cha ☾ (@cha_chronicles) May 11, 2023
The general opinion is that it is offensive and unacceptable to drag Auschwitz survivors' efforts to retain human dignity, to marginalize and distort it into something that it is not, just to highlight the importance of grooming.
"The Auschwitz concentration camp analogy was a terrible mistake.", one viewer wrote on the internet, "It is sloppy and wrong."
"The show was fun until they mentioned the Holocaust that Jews had to endure. It is an inappropriate line to even come out of the lips of an imagined character, given that the sentence was actually written by a live and breathing person.", others commented.
The series' production has been criticized for using the desperate ways of Auschwitz victims without context or discretion.
(SBS Star)