Starbucks Korea to close stores for history education after ‘Tank Day’ furore | Business and Economy

A coffee group to hold ‘historical’ lessons after protesting an advertising campaign that fueled the 1980s war.

Starbucks stores in South Korea will close early next week for workers to receive historic instructions after an advertising campaign sparked public backlash, the US coffee retailer said.

The move comes after Starbucks Korea sparked outrage last month with an ad campaign that raised eyebrows in the country’s pro-democracy movement.

The giant’s use of the words “Tank Day” and “5/18” to promote various coffee-droppers angered South Koreans by launching military unrest on May 18, 1980, against pro-democracy riots in Gwangju.

Starbucks Korea CEO Son Jung-hyun has been fired over his role in the PR crisis, which Starbucks’ global headquarters said was “unintentional” but “shouldn’t have happened”.

In a statement on Monday, Starbucks Korea’s Shinsegae Group employee said all stores worldwide will close at 3pm (06:00 GMT) on Monday next week so that employees can take part in “historical and interesting” training.

Shinsegae Group said the move would be the first time stores have closed early at the same time nationwide since Starbucks was founded in South Korea in 1999.

Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin and senior executives will be trained separately on Wednesday, the trade association said.

“This move aims to take the incident as a lesson and prevent similar cases from happening again across the board in the future,” Shinsegae Group said.

The Gwangju riots helped democratize South Korea, which held its first free elections in decades in 1987 after a succession of military-led governments.

Led by student protests against the rule of strongman Chun Doo-hwan, the democratic movement was brutally crushed when Chun sent troops to retake the southwestern city.

Official figures put the death toll at more than 200, but activists and historians put the death toll at more than 2,000.

South Korea has more than 2,000 Starbucks locations, making the country the Seattle-based chain’s second-largest foreign market after China.