Anti-Semitic cartoons spur outrage

“Korean American community leaders who met with a top official at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles on Friday said they were disgusted by anti-Semitic depictions in a comic book by a popular South Korean author and vowed to mobilize community resources to launch a protest against the publisher. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, met with the group and said he would visit Seoul on March 15 to raise concerns about the comic book. He said its publisher has an obligation to pull the book from the market and replace it with one that depicts Jews accurately. The controversial book, written by Lee Won-bok, a South Korean university professor, is one in his series designed to teach youngsters about other countries in a comic book format. The series, “Distant Countries and Neighboring Countries” in English translation, has sold more than 10 million copies, Cooper said. The images ‘echo classic Nazi canards like those found in [Nazi newspaper] Der Sturmer and ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ by recycling various Jewish conspiracies, like Jewish control of the media and money, Jews profiting from war, and even the reason for the 9/11 attacks,’ Cooper said.”