By Heejin Kim<\/p>\n
SEOUL, May 19 (Reuters) – The head of Starbucks Korea has been fired after a marketing campaign sparked public outrage for evoking painful memories of a brutal military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1980.<\/p>\n
Shinsegae \u200cGroup, the retail conglomerate that licenses and manages the U.S. coffee chain in South Korea, said it had \u200csacked Sohn Jeong-hyun, the head of Starbucks Korea, for carrying out “inappropriate marketing.”<\/p>\n
Sohn’s dismissal came hours after Starbucks launched its “Tank Day” campaign on Monday promoting \u200bwhat it called its “Tank” line of tumblers with the tagline “put it on the table with a sound of ‘Tak!'”<\/p>\n
Monday also marked Democratisation Movement Day, which commemorates the student-led Gwangju Uprising of May 1980, and the campaign drew strong criticism in South Korea.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people are estimated to have died or gone missing when the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan deployed troops and tanks to crack \u200cdown on the protests. Many details remain \u2060unconfirmed, including who gave the order to open fire on the protesters. Chun finally stepped down in 1988 amid growing calls for democracy.<\/p>\n
Critics also questioned the use of the phrase “tak” for echoing \u2060explanations by South Korean police in 1987 for the death of a student protester, who was found to have been tortured. At the time, police said the student died after investigators struck a desk making a “tak” sound, according to local media reports.<\/p>\n
Reuters was unable \u200bto \u200breach Sohn for comment and Starbucks Korea declined to make him \u200bavailable for comment, saying he had already left \u200cthe company. The company has withdrawn the campaign.<\/p>\n
COMPANIES APOLOGISE<\/p>\n
Writing on X on Monday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said he was “enraged” by Starbucks’ campaign and demanded it apologise to families of people killed during the uprising.<\/p>\n
The campaign “tarnished the bloody protests of Gwangju citizens and the victims of the protests,” Lee said, calling it the act of a “degenerate peddler.”<\/p>\n
Starbucks Korea posted a statement on its website apologising for the promotion while Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin also issued a public apology.<\/p>\n
“I \u200cdeeply bow in apology as the representative of the group,” Chung said. \u200bThe marketing “deeply hurt the public, the bereaved families, and the victims of \u200bthe May 18 demonstration.”<\/p>\n
Shares of Shinsegae’s discount retail \u200bchain E-Mart, which owns a 67.5% stake in Starbucks Korea that is now called SCK Company, \u200cwere down 5.5% at 1:15 p.m. (0415 GMT) in Seoul \u200btrading.<\/p>\n
Starbucks Global also issued a \u200bstatement on Tuesday, saying it was sorry about what had happened and that an investigation had begun.<\/p>\n
“We sincerely apologize to the people of Gwangju, to those impacted by this tragedy, and to our customers and communities,” a \u200bspokesperson at Starbucks Global said in an \u200cemail to Reuters.<\/p>\n
“Leadership accountability actions have been taken, and a thorough investigation is underway,” the spokesperson said. “We \u200bare implementing stronger internal controls, review standards, and company-wide training to ensure this does not happen again.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Heejin Kim; Editing by Sam Holmes and Kate Mayberry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Heejin Kim SEOUL, May 19 (Reuters) – The head of Starbucks Korea has been fired after a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":806839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,258756,99589,50440,68321,328211,328212,15243,328210,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-806838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-chun-doo-hwan","tag-marketing-campaign","tag-public-apology","tag-public-outrage","tag-shinsegae-group","tag-sohn-jeong-hyun","tag-south-korea","tag-starbucks-korea","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116599810090324658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}