"Backlash over Japan cosmetics boss 'racist' comments", 17 Dec 2020

DHC’s boss Yoshiaki Yoshida made the comments in a message on the company’s website.

In it, he disparaged rival firm, the beverage-making giant Suntory, as ‘Chontory’ for its use of Japanese-Korean models.

"Chon" is a derogatory term for Koreans in Japan...

"For some reason, the models hired for Suntory's commercials are almost all Korean-Japanese. So that's why it seems they're mocked on the Internet as 'Chontory," Mr Yoshida wrote.

He also wrote that DHC's employees by comparison were all "pure Japanese".

The company has since faced an online backlash with some Japanese Twitter users, who have created the hashtag "I no longer buy products from discriminatory DHC."

The cosmetics company told Japanese media that they had “no particular response” to the issue.

This is not the first discriminatory comment made Mr Yoshida has made against Koreans.

In 2016, in a message on the DHC website, he described Koreans in Japan as “pseudo-Japanese” and suggested they return to South Korea...