With one flick of his head, Peruvian soccer player Carlos Bazalar scored the game-winning goal against South Korea, the host team of the FIFA U-17 World Cup tournament. And with one ill-advised celebration, he sent the Korean community into an uproar.

On Aug. 22, with more than 27,000 fans at Suwon looking on in dismay, Bazalar ran to a nearby camera after scoring, pressed his index fingers onto his eyes and stretched them outward.

After the scene reran on YouTube and other sites, the Korean blogging community expressed outrage at this seemingly unprovoked insult. They condemned the gesture as both malicious and blatantly racist.

Peruvians responded in kind, explaining that Bazalar’s act was not racially-charged and that he meant to dedicate the goal to his younger brother, who had asked him to do so before the game. Bazalar lovingly refers to his brother as “chinito” because he inherited “Asian-like” features from his Japanese great-grandfather.

Despite the explanation, the public response remains largely critical. Perhaps the “celebration” was simply lost in translation.