On July 28th, LOONA’s Yves communicated with fans on the official paid fandom platform FAB. She exchanged jokes with fans by sharing a photo of her lips swelling due to an allergic reaction. Korean fans said that her lips reminded them of Go Eun Ae, a character from “Run Hani”. Yves found this funny so she changed her profile picture on FAB into a photo of Go Eun Ae.
However, international fans were not happy about her profile picture. They pointed out that Go Eun Ae’s curly hair and thick lips have a racist meaning that ridicules and demeans black people. There was a flood of negative reactions asking Yves for an apology.
Eventually, Yves changed her profile picture back to her selfie and apologized. She said, “You must have been very upset because I used the character Go Eun Ae as my profile picture. It was a character from the classic cartoon ‘Run Hani’, so I did not think that it could be offensive. I apologize to everyone who was upset. Next time, before using a character, I will check again to avoid any misunderstandings.”
The character Go Eun Ae used by Yves appears in KBS2’s “Run Hani”, a popular Korean TV cartoon from the late 1980s to the 1990s.
Go Eun Ae’s features such as a fat body and thick lips are often used as a cosplay parody by Korean comedians, such as Jung Joon Ha of MBC’s “Infinite Challenge” and Park Na Rae of tvN’s “Amazing Saturday”. Therefore, no one in Korea ever had a problem with people copying this character.
Meanwhile, LOONA recently made a comeback with “Flip That”.
Source: wikitree