Telemundo Hosts Suspended For Making Slant-Eye Gesture While Celebrating South Korea's World Cup Win

If South Korea hadn’t beaten or drawn Germany yesterday, Mexico would have been sent packing from the World Cup. It would have been a national nightmare, considering their sterling performance through the tournament’s first two matches, which included a win against the defending champions. Instead, in a massive upset, South Korea took down the Germans, 2-0, allowing Mexico to advance to the knockouts, where they’ll face Brazil in the Round of 16.

Naturally, Mexico fans have been pretty happy with anything and anyone Korean, as evidenced by the riotous shit they’ve done and the unrelenting praise they’ve given to a number of Korean and Korean-American fans in the last 24 hours or so.

Unfortunately, two Telemundo television anchors took their enthusiasm too far and ended up getting extremely racist on yesterday’s episode of Un Nuevo Día, a daily morning show. James Tahhan, a celebrity chef and co-host of the show, held slant-eye pose for about 20 seconds while his colleague Janice Bencosme joined in. This all happened while another host, Marco Antonio Regil, screamed about forcibly kissing Korean people and giving thanks to the Virgin patron saint of Korea, or something:

A translation of what Regil was saying:

I want to take a knee and say thank you to the Virgin of Korea! I beg every Mexican to go and celebrate at a Korean restaurant. Consume their products, kiss them, hug them, marry them, give them green cards, whatever! Long live Korea! Yes sir!

Telemundo has since released an apologetic statement, and Tahhan and Bencosme have been suspended. Tahhan also tweeted a statement of his own:

It should be exceedingly easy to go through life without making the slant-eye gesture on camera, and yet somehow people keep doing it.