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