BTS is depicted as bruised moles

U.S. trading card manufacturing company Topps came under fire after it revealed a card that depicts BTS as characters of a game. Local newspapers including the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday that Topps unveiled its “Garbage Pail Kids SHAMMY Awards” sticker collection that portrays major artists who performed at the 63rd Grammy Awards on Saturday local time.

In the card, BTS members are depicted as pieces in “Whack-a-Mole,” and their faces are bruised and scarred from the beating with the gramophone trophy. This is in contrast to Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish with a microphone on stage and Megan Thee Stallion who carries her Grammy award while riding a horse.

Fans of the boy band pointed out that the portrayal of BTS is particularly violent and it is racist to put “K-pop” at the bottom of the card when other cards have the names of the artists on them.

“We hear and understand our consumers who are upset about the portrayal of BTS in our GPK Shammy Awards product and we apologize for including it,” the company wrote. “We have removed the BTS sticker card from the set.” Billboard also posted an advert of the card collection but deleted the BTS part after the portrayal caused controversy.


Taek Kyoon Sohn sohn@donga.com