The new Mogstation items represent a painful period for Koreans, please read.

[Xiou]

Hello, I'm posting on the Forums for the first time, because it's been brought to my attention that China's exclusives have been released to the NA servers. I wanted to let the Dev's know that these clothes represent a really painful period for Koreans and others, because of how violent and oppressive the Occupation from Japan was... This would be like releasing a Nazi uniform. My Korean grandfather would tell me stories about these uniforms, Koreans would be forced to wear these clothes and discard their Korean heritage. If you refused or rebelled in any way, you were killed, or murdered in front of your entire school, or you suffered other major repercussions. To have such items released in FFXIV pains me a great deal, especially since there seems to be no word form the Dev's on this matter. There are so many beautiful Kimono designs they could have picked, but they chose a design that just so happens to represent a painful time for the Country my family, and many others are from.

I really love FFXIV, and I love the Dev's and I will always defend their decisions. But I really wanted to educate people on this matter, since it's a very serious one. I was expecting the Dev's to release some sort of letter about this situation since it caused such an uproar on the Korean servers. But since that didn't happen I decided to make a post about it.


Thank you for reading.

EDIT: I'm not posting this for the clothes to be removed, since I highly doubt that will happen. All I want to do is educate others on the stigma surrounding these clothes. I'm trying to find credible sources detailing this but the truth of the matter is, the Japanese occupation of Korea censored a ton of the atrocities, and are still being censored to this day. There are links to sources detailing the occupation of Korea provided in the second link I posted. Instead of focusing on the comparison the the Nazi uniform and saying it's not the same, please educate yourself on the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Philippines, and others. The violent history and erasure of culture is very much like the Nazi occupation and I think the comparison is valid (Of course it's not an exact comparison, I would rather people focus on the topic at hand and not argue about if this is the same as the Nazi occupation).
Again, I just want to educate others on the topic at hand, not protest the clothes. My main motivation for posting this was to see if a Dev would comment on the intentions of Square Enix with releasing this uniform.

Edit 2: From the user enlakertuh on tumblr:

"This might not matter much to you and that’s fair. But please understand why so many people are upset. And also please understand that these issues aren’t just Korean. Comfort women and WW2-era atrocities at the hands of the Japanese were a multi-country wide phenomenon that I beg more people to look into. I’m not asking you to hate Japan. I am however asking you to engage with a potentially unsavory part of it’s history for a fuller understanding of this issue. Because it’s not ‘just an outfit’. "

Link to the post: (please look since it has credible sources about the history of the matter) https://saerumii.tumblr.com/post/185...nt-controversy

[Souljacker]

I had no idea. I hope that I'm wrong about SE never reading these threads and someone pushes this one up the chain. No need to have something akin to a nazi uniform in this game we all love.

[SturmChurro]

I need to buy it before they give in and get rid of it then. I kind of like it, but am broke right now.

[Wolf_Heartnet]

Well well well... Square Enix themselves are in violation of the terms of service. What a tangled web we've weaved.

■Nuisance behaviour
"Nuisance behaviour" means speech or behaviour that hurts others or obstructs game play, but which is not classified as harassment. Even if it was not the intention, a penalty may be imposed if the end result was that another person was hurt or obstructed.

◆Offensive expression
"Offensive expression" means an expression in general that inflicts emotional distress by being offensive to another person. Offensive expression may include:

・Expressions that significantly lack consideration for another person

Edit: I just want to point out that this new t.o.s. is impossible to fully comply with as Square themselves has already broken it in the short time these changes were made. Things should be reverted back due to how unrealistic these rules are and I at the very least would like to see how square enix tends to take responsibility for them breaking their own tos.

All said and done, If anyone likes these outfits, now is the time to get them in case they get removed.

[Bright-Flower]

This is just a style of clothing and not a specific uniform right? The comparison to a nazi uniform feels a bit off, when this would be more like what germans wore at the time if I'm understanding the story correctly here. I don't doubt that the occupation was horrific and I wouldn't want it to be forgotten. But it's been 74 years since the end of WW2. If it were a nazu/military uniform, or a uniform of some kind in particular, I'd get it, but is this just the general style that was popular at the time? Because that's very different from a uniform if I'm understanding the parallels here.

[Xiou]

This is the specific, exact design they used when occupying Korea and other nations, and the exact designs that Korean students had to wear during the occupation. They could have switched the outfit up a bit to get away from the stigma surrounding the outfit, but for some reason they didn't.

[Raldo]

I would appreciate links to actual historical information related to this, in addition to your own social media links. Or like, even keywords to look up. I'm not familiar enough with the topic to do further research.

As far as I can tell, you've simply called it "the occupation". Does it have a more specific historical name, to more easily find references? I would be genuinely interested in learning more. Unfortunately, I realize that certain events in that time period have been... uh... deliberately obscured, so it may not have a proper name.

Regardless of whether more information is readily available, this is unfortunate to hear.

[Theodric]

I am strongly against the idea of censoring the game. If you don't like a particular outfit, you have the option to simply not purchase it. Removing items from the game because they offend someone is a very slippery slope. Furthermore, a lot of the backlash seems to be coming from the perpetually offended corners of the internet, namely Twitter and Tumblr. A crowd who typically thrive on creating controversies to be outraged by even if it does not affect them personally in any way.

[xxvaynxx]

This is just a style of clothing and not a specific uniform right? The comparison to a nazi uniform feels a bit off, when this would be more like what germans wore at the time if I'm understanding the story correctly here. I don't doubt that the occupation was horrific and I wouldn't want it to be forgotten. But it's been 74 years since the end of WW2. If it were a nazu/military uniform, or a uniform of some kind in particular, I'd get it, but is this just the general style that was popular at the time? Because that's very different from a uniform if I'm understanding the parallels here.

Pretty much this. Not defending what happened but this is just an outfit wore by students? not a uniform, nazi's didn't force people to wear their outfits.
They just outright killed them and/or tortured.

So imo, its not really comparable. Nazi's even have a certain sign...Its ok to still be offended but I don't think this kimono is really comparable to the likes of a nazi uniform.

[Alucard135]