Chaeyoung of the K-pop girl group TWICE. Photo: Instagram/@chaeyo.0
Chaeyoung of the hitmaking K-pop girl group TWICE apologized late Tuesday for wearing a shirt bearing Nazi imagery in a recent Instagram post.
The shirt in the now-deleted photo showed a graphic of Sid Vicious of the English punk rock band Sex Pistols wearing a tilted swastika, a symbol associated with the German Nazi party.
"I sincerely apologize regarding the Instagram post. I didn't correctly recognize the meaning of the tilted swastika in the t-shirt I wore," the 23-year-old rapper-singer said in a statement posted on Instagram.
"I deeply apologize for not thoroughly reviewing it [and] causing concern," she said.
Chaeyoung added she would "pay absolute attention in the future to prevent any situation similar from happening again."
On its website, TWICE's management company JYP Entertainment also apologized for the incident in a similarly-worded statement.
"We sincerely apologize for not correctly recognizing the meaning of the tilted swastika in the t-shirt. We deeply apologize for not thoroughly reviewing it from the label side," said JYP, one of the leading labels in K-pop.
The incident comes shortly after Chaeyoung was seen wearing on stage a shirt allegedly representing QAnon, an American far-right conspiracy theory movement.
During TWICE's performance of its latest single "Set Me Free" on South Korean music show "Show! Music Core" last Saturday, Chaeyoung wore a crop top showing the letter Q, designed after the United States flag, with the words "We Go All" — a phrase from QAnon's slogan.
TWICE recently released its 12th extended play "Ready To Be," which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
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