Miss Universe Alicia Machado Calls North and South Korea ‘the Chinas’

Alicia Machado, the Miss Venezuela who, in 1996, went on to become Miss Universe, has deleted her Twitter account after putting her foot in her mouth and thus unleashing a bitter tirade against herself for confusing the Koreas with “the Chinas.”

As the New York Daily News can confirm, all hell broke loose over the weekend, when Machado went to her Twitter to ask her followers to join hands in prayer for the terrible situation in “the Chinas.”

She was referring, of course, to the armed attack on a South Korean island by North Korea. Since this is definitely not a topic to be made light of in any way, her fans and followers were not pleased.

“Tonight I want to ask you to join me in a prayer for peace, that these attacks between the Chinas do not make our situation worse,” Machado tweeted.

When she saw the kind of reaction she prompted with her followers, the former beauty queen did not think it would be best if she just apologized, but chose to delete her account, saying the “psychos” were to blame.

“I now have a lot of psychopaths on the account and it’s best I start another one,” she said right before signing off.

Shortly after, singer Paulina Rubio came to Machado’s defense, also on Twitter, telling people to back off of her because she’d done nothing wrong, OhNoTheyDidn’t reports.

Clearly, she only made matters worse, saying: “Leave Alicia alone. All Japanese people look the same and China is a very big country.”

Rubio too caused a frenzy of negative comments with this one tweet but she didn’t choose to delete the entire account over it – she only deleted the offending tweet, ONTD says.

Machado, in her turn, went on television to explain that what her fellow tweeps perceived as a gaffe was actually just a manner of speaking that got misinterpreted – and then things were totally blown out of proportion.

“I didn’t make a mistake and I’m not stupid. I know both countries; I’ve been there,” she says on Univision (translated quotes also via ONTD).

“It was just a funny way to refer to the entire Asian continent. Like when we say ‘Look at that Gringo’ and turns out that he’s Canadian. We call Chinese to everyone who looks Asian. That’s what I meant,” Machado went on to say.