Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Oct 07, 2025

The U.S. Ambassador Mustache That Irritated South Koreans Is No More

The U.S. Ambassador Mustache That Irritated South Koreans Is No More

Blaming the summer’s heat, the U.S. ambassador lopped off a bit of facial hair that had reminded some of brutal colonial Japan.

The mustache, a thick salt-and-pepper number neatly shaped into a chevron, had survived questions, protests and even Photoshopped ridicule. But it has met its match: the long, sticky days of a Korean pandemic summer.

At least that was the account given by the American ambassador to South Korea, Harry B. Harris Jr., as he walked into a Seoul barbershop. He sat down for a clean shave of a bit of facial hair he had held fast to for two years, even as it threatened to escalate diplomatic tensions.

Some in South Korea had viewed the mustache worn by Mr. Harris, a Japanese-American, as a distasteful reminder of those worn by the colonial Japanese governors who ruled Korea from 1910 to 1945, a period that holds traumatic memories on the peninsula.

Mr. Harris long maintained that he meant no disrespect with his mustache, which he said he had grown for his retirement as a Navy admiral. This weekend, though, he said that the facial hair had become intolerable under the masks he had been wearing in the muggy heat.

“For some people, they can wear a mask and have a mustache or a beard. But for me, it’s just uncomfortable in this heat, and I have to wear a mask,” Mr. Harris said in a video posted on Saturday by the U.S. Embassy.


The video, which showed him bumping elbows with a barber in a traditional wood-paneled shop before settling in for his shave, was produced in the style of a cheerful game show, punctuated by dramatic sound effects and captions in bubble font.

Draped in pink towels, Mr. Harris rolled his eyes to comic effect when the barber dipped his black leather seat backward and brought a pale green razor to his face.

“Glad I did this. For me, it was either keep the ‘stache or lose the mask,” Mr. Harris wrote in a tweet on Saturday.
Mr. Harris, who was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and an American Navy officer, became ambassador to South Korea in 2018.

One of the first questions he was asked upon landing in the country was about his mustache, with some South Koreans wondering if it was a calculated insult. In 2019, demonstrators protesting the cost of hosting U.S. troops in South Korea held placards with Photoshopped cat whiskers on his face.

In an interview with The Korea Times in December, Mr. Harris said that the mustache reflected his new life as a diplomat after a four-decade career in the Navy that required him to be clean-shaven at most times.

He said his ethnicity had no bearing on his work in the embassy, adding: “I’m American ambassador to Korea, not the Japanese-American ambassador to Korea.”

Asked at the time whether he would shave in order to improve his relationship with South Koreans, he said he would keep the facial hair.

“You would have to convince me that somehow the mustache is viewed in a way that hurts our relationship,” he said.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
×