Starbucks Korea to give employees historical awareness course after backlash over marketing
Starbucks Korea will shut all stores in the country at 3 p.m. on June 22 for staff training on historical awareness and social sensitivity, the operator Shinsegae Group said on Monday, following public backlash over a marketing campaign, Reuters writes.
The coffee chain faced widespread criticism and suffered a “very significant” drop in sales after last month’s campaign that evoked a brutal 1980 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
Shinsegae’s affiliate E-Mart owns Starbucks Korea, which launched its ‘Tank Day’ tumbler promotion on the anniversary of the May 18 Gwangju Uprising, when the military government deployed troops and tanks to suppress pro-democracy demonstrations.
Starbucks Korea headquarters staff and executives from Shinsegae’s E-Mart division will undergo the same training on June 17 at the group’s in-house training centre, while Shinsegae Chairman Chung Yong-jin and affiliate CEOs will attend a separate session on June 24, the group said.
The history awareness lecture, led by a history professor from Sungkyunkwan University, will review the major events in South Korea’s modern and contemporary history since the 1950s and discuss how they should be understood, it said.
A separate social sensitivity training, conducted by a sociology professor at the same university, will look at how companies should consider social issues such as history, labour, gender and human rights in marketing and other corporate activities, the company said.
