South Korean farmers unite in opposition to commercial that "sexually objectified" garlic

About two years ago, the town of Hongseong County, South Korea wanted to help advertise its regional Hongsan variety of garlic. Rather than go the boring route of cutting together a bunch of clips showing families happily sharing meals made with garlic, Hongseong took a different path. It produced a commercial about a woman who wants to have sex with an anthropomorphic garlic bulb.

Now, with the ad having gained notoriety through an extended marketing campaign, South Korean farmers have banded together to decry the commercial and have it removed from billboards and YouTube.

Make sure you’re completely alone, close the blinds, and watch on if you’re willing to see just how extreme the commercial in question is for yourself.

The Associated Press translated and summarized the ad’s dialog, explaining that it’s a parody of 2004 movie Once Upon A Time In High School in which the garlic-infatuated woman describes her herb-headed lover—and Hongsan garlic itself—as “hard” and “very thick.”

When the commercial began playing on video billboards in Seoul and Daejon, the sheer erotic power of a woman swooning over a guy with a garlic bulb for a head prompted outrage from influential national farmer organizations.

In a statement from the Korean Peasants League and the Korean Women Peasants Association, the groups requested punishments for those who made the ad, an apology, and detailed “steps on how to prevent similar incidents.”

“We can’t repress our astonishment,” the statement read. “The video offended the people who watched it and dealt a big blow to the image of the agricultural product that farmers have laboriously grown.” The Associated Press provides further (excellent) quotes from the statement, which include descriptions of the commercial that say it’s not only “suggestive” and “inappropriate,” but also that “it ‘sexually objectified’ garlic.”

In order to avoid causing further harm to the reputation of garlic everywhere, Hongseong County pulled the spot from its official YouTube and “stopped airing it on … billboards last week.”

Fortunately, garlic kind of just sells itself, regardless of whether or not its buyers would also like to have sex with it. Our hope is that this means everything will still work out just fine for the garlic farmers of Hongseong, who will now know to keep their erotic plant fantasies to themselves going forward.

[via Boing Boing]

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