In January Harry Harris retorted that his grooming was a matter of private selection.
Seoul, South Korea:
Probably the most controversial moustache in South Korea has fallen sufferer to the razor’s blade, with US ambassador Harry Harris visiting a standard barbershop months after his facial hair grew to become the thing of bizarre criticism.
Seoul and Washington are safety allies and the US stations 28,500 troops within the nation.
However their relationship has been strained in recent times by variations of their approaches to North Korea and over cost-sharing obligations.
Harris has a number of instances been the thing of controversy within the South, and accused of high-handedness. Even his facial hair grew to become a difficulty of debate.
The envoy’s mom was Japanese and, with Koreans nonetheless bitterly resentful of Tokyo’s 1910-45 colonisation of the peninsula, commentators claimed the moustache alluded to the fashions of imperial governors-general from the interval.
In January Harris retorted that his grooming was a matter of private selection, and that his critics had been “cherry selecting historical past”.
However over the weekend he uploaded a video to social media of him getting the moustache shaved off at a standard Korean barbershop, saying he did so to maintain cool within the Seoul summer season, whereas carrying a masks to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
“Glad I did this,” the envoy stated in a tweet.
“For me it was both hold the ‘stache or lose the masks. Summer time in Seoul is means too scorching & humid for each. #COVID tips matter & I am a masked man!”
Seoul and Tokyo are each main US allies, democracies and market economies confronted with an overbearing China and nuclear-armed North Korea, however are locked in bitter disputes over historic points.
Earlier this yr Harris stated: “I perceive the historic animosity that exists between each of the nations however I am not the Japanese American ambassador in Korea, I am the American ambassador to Korea.
“And to take that historical past and put it on me just because an accident of start I believe is a mistake.”
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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