Starbucks Korea to shut stores for history training after ‘Tank Day’ furore

Coffee concatenation to clasp ‘historical awareness’ grooming aft backlash against selling run that evoked 1980 subject crackdown.

Starbucks stores successful South Korea volition adjacent aboriginal adjacent week truthful employees tin person past acquisition aft a botched selling run triggered a nationalist backlash, the US java chain’s section relation says.

The determination comes aft Starbucks Korea provoked a furore past period with a selling run that evoked 1 of the astir achy chapters successful the country’s march to democracy.

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The java giant’s usage of the wording “Tank Day” and “5/18” to beforehand a scope of java tumblers outraged South Koreans by evoking a subject crackdown connected May 18, 1980, against a pro-democracy uprising successful Gwangju.

Starbucks Korea CEO Son Jung-hyun was fired implicit his relation successful the PR disaster, which Starbucks’s planetary office said was “unintentional” but “never should person happened”.

In a connection connected Monday, Starbucks Korea relation Shinsegae Group said each outlets nationwide volition adjacent astatine 3pm (06:00 GMT) connected Monday adjacent week truthful employees tin enactment successful “historical consciousness and societal sensitivity” training.

Shinsegae Group said the determination will mark the archetypal clip that stores person unopen aboriginal each astatine erstwhile crossed the state since Starbucks launched successful South Korea successful 1999.

Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin and apical executives volition separately acquisition grooming connected Wednesday, the retail conglomerate said.

“The determination is intended to instrumentality the incidental arsenic a acquisition and forestall akin cases from recurring crossed the radical successful the future,” Shinsegae Group said.

The Gwangju Uprising was a large catalyst successful the democratisation of South Korea, which held its archetypal escaped elections successful decades successful 1987 aft a succession of military-led administrations.

Led by pupil protesters opposed to the regularisation of subject strongman Chun Doo-hwan, the democratisation question was violently crushed erstwhile Chun deployed the subject to retake power of the southwestern city.

Government figures enactment the decease toll astatine much than 200 people, but activists and historians person estimated the existent fig to beryllium much than 2,000.

South Korea is location to much than 2,000 Starbucks outlets, making the state the 2nd biggest overseas marketplace for the Seattle-based concatenation aft China.