On June 13, freshly discharged from his mandatory military service, BTS’s Jungkook found himself at the center of an international controversy after images surfaced of him wearing a black cap during rehearsals for fellow member J-Hope’s concert in Seoul.
His reappearance, post-military, should have been a celebratory moment. Instead, it turned into a PR headache with geopolitical undertones. Because perched on Jungkook’s head, in stark white lettering across a black cap, were four words that cracked open the calm: Make Tokyo Great Again.
The phrase was instantly recognizable as a riff on “Make America Great Again,” the campaign slogan of U.S. President Donald Trump. MAGA: four letters now inseparable from nationalism, xenophobia and white grievance politics in the American psyche.
In Japan, the echoes are different but still fraught. Variants like “Make Tokyo Great Again” have occasionally surfaced in nationalist and imperialist circles online, particularly among those with anti-Korean leanings. Even Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko was photographed in 2017 wearing a towel emblazoned with the same phrase during her re-election campaign, cloaking right-wing sentiment in optimistic city branding.
Which brings us back to Jungkook — a South Korean idol, hailed by many as a symbol of national pride. And there he was, wearing a hat tied, however obliquely, to ideologies that many Koreans see as fraught with historical tension and national trauma. The reaction from Korean fans and netizens was swift and cutting.
Many felt it wasn’t a knowing political statement. “I honestly think Jungkook wore it without knowing,” wrote one fan. That didn’t absolve him, though. The fan continued, “Even if he didn’t know, it was still wrong. There’s no excuse.” Others wondered why no one on his team— no stylist, no manager, no intern with basic Internet service — flagged the phrase. One user dryly asked, “Not a single staff member stopped this?”
Jungkook, for his part, responded quickly. In a post on the fan platform Weverse in the early hours of June 14, he apologized unequivocally. He admitted he had not been aware of the phrase’s historical or political implications and took full responsibility, stating the hat had been immediately discarded.
The brand behind the cap, Basicks Japan, also weighed in. In an Instagram Story, they wrote:
“We sincerely apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable.
That said, we believe in the freedom to express ideas through fashion.
This design was not intended to convey any political stance. It was rather an iconic way to express our hopes for a thriving Tokyo fashion scene.”
A neutral enough explanation — fashion as hope, not history — but the damage was done. The hat promptly sold out, of course. One Japanese Twitter user quipped they had assumed it was just a tacky foreigner-joke item sold in touristy Asakusa until they saw the exorbitant price tag.
It would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as a minor fashion misstep, overinflated by the internet’s endless appetite for drama. And in some ways, that’s exactly what it was. A four–word slogan, a black cap, a moment of unawareness — hardly the stuff of international scandal.
But then again: a hat isn’t just a hat. Symbols are not inert. They carry weight, especially when they’ve crossed oceans and centuries. And such heavy context can’t be erased or ignored, no matter what the designer’s purported intention might have been.
