NOTE: THESE PICTURES CONTAIN CONTENT THAT MAY BE UNSUITABLE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
South Korea residents have been fighting to get a giant statue of Spider-Man hanging on top of a local shopping mall taken down for a while now. The big problem with the statue that has people upset is the fact that Spidey has a giant hard-to-miss erection. Even though it has been up for about a year now, it wasn't until just recently that the situation is being dealt with. Eunsuk Yoo, the artists behind the statue, was advised to either take it down, or have the erection removed. And could you guess what he said? He told them that he'd rather have the statue taken down and destroyed than change it, saying that he wanted the statue to make Spider-Man feel more 'natural.' This of course means that he actually built the statue with the intention of the boner being noticeable, which itself caused much more controversy between locals than what there used to be. He said on his Facebook page (via Examiner):
I am the artist who made this piece. My reason for it was that I wanted to apply the natural physical phenomenon to a superhero depict whats's natural in the morning without lies and superficial-ness in a comical way.
There have been some comments on various community sites and Facebook pages that this is lewd and a disgrace to the source material. Lotte Shopping Center has received many complaint calls this morning from a certain organization, and after their meeting, it was decided that I have to either modify or take the statue down. Instead of modifying my work, I've decided to take it down.
It was ok for about a year and now it has to be taken down due to a sudden interest in the piece, which is sad. But I understand that a piece that could be potentially interpreted as lewd can be offensive at a place like a shopping mall. It's disappointing, but I'll reach out to the public with a better work next time.
The statue of Spider-Man has been admired by local kids that both see it when entering the mall and while playing at the nearby playground, who don't even notice the giant erection, but when their parents take a closer look at the statue in which their kids are admiring, word started spreading that the statue is very insulting to everyone in town and is inappropriate for youngsters. Obviously the creator didn't put into consideration the fact that this is a fictional character that kids look up to, and that kids aren't exactly supposed to be looking at giant erections. It is currently unknown if Marvel Entertainment was contacted regarding the statue, either before it was put up or after awareness started to spread. Below you can check out a few pictures that were taken of the rude statue.