Superdry's KOREA T-shirt got the flag's trigrams wrong — recalled in its own market

Superdry, the UK-founded global fashion brand, sold a 'Seoul Haetae Graphic T-shirt' through its official Korean stores and online mall. Printed across the back were the words 'Seoul' and 'KOREA', an illustration of a Haetae (the mythical lion-dog of Korean folklore), and the four trigrams (건곤감리) that sit in the corners of South Korea's national flag, the Taegeukgi. The trigrams were arranged in the wrong order — the layout did not match how they appear on the actual flag.

The error was reported by netizens and confirmed on 28 July 2026 by Professor Seo Kyeong-deok of Sungshin Women's University, who publicises mistakes in the use of Korean national symbols on social media. He called it 'clearly a mistake, not intentional,' but said global companies must run a thorough review whenever they use a nation's symbols in design, and pointed to the same problem at UAE Shake Shack and at New Balance in the same period.

Superdry's Korean operator, Pond Group, responded that the shirt had launched in October 2025. After confirming the graphic error it halted sales and recalled the product, corrected the trigram arrangement and reprinted it; a corrected version has been on sale since roughly early March 2026.

The controversy landed during a wider string of national-symbol misuses by foreign brands in Korea — comparable trigram errors had surfaced at the Qatar World Cup and LEGOLAND years earlier — so one T-shirt became another proof point that global brands do not check the flag before they print it.