The shirt sparked outrage by the local Israeli embassy and Namsai promptly apologized, saying she did not know what the symbols meant.
“I was shocked, but I felt it was my fault,” The BNK48 singer said in an interview with Israel’s i24 News. “I was not aware, even though I should have known.”
I24 visited the area to investigate whether this was an isolated incident or if Nazi symbolism is creeping into the culture of the Far East unabated.
According to the report, Southeast Asia is wrestling with a lack of understanding about the Holocaust, allowing Nazi symbols to be integrated into mainstream culture.
“I study German since high school, but we get only little knowledge about Nazi Germany,” Thanapon Danpakdee, a student at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand told i24.
Further a professor at the school told the news station that Hitler is associated with being a dictator, and in Asian culture, “a dictator is someone who can modernize the state,” said Professor Tul Israngura Na Ayudhy. “Dictators have been applauded by Asian culture.”