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BTS meets LDF: Lotte Duty Free posts BTS' red cut pics, fans angry over Jungkook's tattoo edit

Lotte Duty Free has released details along with photos announcing their new event with K-Pop groups like BTS and TXT

Lotte Corporation is a South Korean multinational conglomerate led by the country’s fifth-largest chaebol — a family run business. Lotte is famous in Korea for its snacks, department stores, duty-free shops, hotels, theme parks and baseball team Lotte Giants. It also owns a 555 meter-high tower called the Lotte World Tower, which is the tallest building in South Korea and fifth-tallest building in the world.

Lotte Duty Free started as the first general duty free shop in South Korea. It had first opened its store in Myeong-dong in 1980 and has now opened several branches in the Lotte World Tower and Incheon Airport as well as in Busan, and operates a total of eight stores nationwide. It is one of the few stores in South Korea where one could buy international products, custom duty free.

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The Red Cut photoshoots

Lotte Duty Free have also been known for their association with BTS. The K-pop group are the official brand ambassadors for Lotte and have performed in various events including their Duty Free Family Concerts over the past few years alongside other K-pop acts like Super Junior, Twice, TXT, ITZY and more.

On August 11, Lotte announced their latest collaborative event with BTS. Before BTS, Lotte also introduced TXT as the other group who are part of this event. The event began with a unique photoshoot titled the “Red Cut Photoshoot'' with TXT on August 10. Their photoshoot was titled ‘Disclosure of the sweet Tomorrow X Together’ version. They mentioned that these photos would, “soothe your blues of not being able to go on a vacation.”

BTS in suits with a red background

Lotte posted on their social media accounts individual photos of BTS members from the photoshoot on August 11. Their post was captioned, “The combination of the attractive ‘RED’ + ‘BTS’ in white suit? Like cures like!” Lotte claims that these photos are here to heat up the hot summer. They also said that once their tweet hits 5,000 likes, they would release smartphone background versions of each photo for both BTS and TXT members.

The red cut photoshoot showed photos of each BTS member wearing white suits or tuxedos while they posed in front of the camera. Behind them was a red backdrop, unlike that of TXT’s blush pink backdrop which contrasted BTS’ fierce power with TXT’s youthful innocence.

Jungkook's tattoo fiasco

One thing that fans were quick to notice was the odd way in which Jungkook of BTS was edited in the photo. It was noted by some fans that all of his tattoos were edited out of the photo. It is a well-established fact that however modern or advanced South Korea is technologically, their culture still holds much value to them.

Despite being modern in other aspects, the Korean society still looks at tattoos in a negative light. As this is an event by a family-run business, Lotte is most certainly trying to adhere to the cultural norms by editing out Jungkook’s tattoos.

Fans react to each member of BTS

Here is what fans had to say about the members of BTS and how they looked ethereal in the photos. For RM (Namjoon) one fan said, "Our King and Leader has arrived ~ Love these pictures." For Jin (Seokjin) one fan said, "VISUAL KING KIM SEOKJIN." For Suga (Yoongi) one fan said, "By gooood, this SUGA is all that's right in this life. HE LOOKS SO SPARKLY AND BEAUTIFUL." For J-Hope (Hoseok) one fan said, "Gorgeous Prince Jung Hoseok in white suit!!!! Speechless*" For Jimin one fan plainly stated, "PARK JIMIN?" and another fan said, "OMG Taehyung is so gorgeous & beautiful Kim taehyung "V" for BTS MEETS LDF" for V (Taehyung) while another fan jumped to support Jungkook and his tattoos saying, "Because you removed his Army tattoos ! I will post this here to let you know tattoos are part of jungkook and we are part of jungkook tattoos."