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Maxim US blasts Maxim Korea for lurid magazine cover

September 3, 2015

(Korea Times file)

By Bahk Eun-ji

Maxim U.S. magazine has denounced Maxim Korea’s controversial September cover, which features a photo that strongly suggests a murder.

A Maxim U.S. spokesperson said the cover was “deeply troubling,” and strongly condemned the cover in a statement to The Huffington Post.

Maxim Korea’s cover has been severely criticized. In the photo, actor Kim Byung-ok _ well known for playing villains in movies such as “Old Boy” and “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” _ stands in front of a car, from which a woman’s legs tied by duct tape protrude from the half-open trunk.

Maxim Korea said the concept was “The Real Bad Guy” and that “Girls like bad guys? This is a real bad guy. Are you dying to love it?”

The cover has prompted an online petition calling for the magazine to pull the issue from newsstands. The petition has almost 10,000 signatures.

In response, Maxim Korea said it had “no problem” with the cover, because although it depicted a heinous crime such as murder and abandonment of a body, it did not depict a sex crime.

A Maxim Korea editor also posted a statement on the magazine’s official Facebook page, saying, “If we had wanted to glorify sex crimes, we would have put So Ji-sub for the cover instead of Kim.”

The statement was deleted almost immediately.