Tech firm fined over 'comfort women' emoticon
A local tech company has been fined 15,000 yuan (US$2,260) and suspended for two months for releasing emoticon of “comfort women”, Shanghai police said yesterday.
Police said “frivolous” captions of photographs of comfort women were shown in a recent documentary film about their lives in World War II appeared on the Internet on August 18 and came under fire from both online users and the media.
“Comfort women” were women and girls forced into sex slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II.
Police said the company, called Siyanhui, was punished according to Internet regulations for ignoring social morality in pursuit of business profit.
Responsible people from the company were educated by the police and made to write letters of apology.
In its letter of apology published on its website, the company said “a young editor” on the team “ignorant of knowledge on history and politics” created five emoticons from the trailer of the documentary “Twenty-two” and added words to three of them.
The legal representative of the tech company, a woman surnamed Ding, was being questioned by the police.
