President Lee Jae Myung's X post condemning a 2019 Musinsa advertisement. The post was uploaded on May 20. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
President Lee Jae Myung publicly condemned a 2019 Musinsa advertisement that appeared to mock the torture death of
pro
-democracy student activist Park Jong-cheol — two days after Starbucks Korea was accused of making light of military dictatorship in a promotion campaign.
“The advertisement demeaned the [1987] June democracy movement, which was ignited by the death of martyr Park Jong-cheol,” Lee wrote on his X on Wednesday with an image of the advertisement in question.
Fashion retailer Musinsa ran a sock advertisement featuring the phrase, “I slammed the desk with a ‘tak,’ and it dried instantly with an ‘ugh.’”
Observers criticized that the phrase appeared to have referenced the death of Park. Following Park’s death in 1987, police falsely claimed that he had “died with a sound of ‘ugh’ after a ‘tak’ on the desk.” In Korean, “tak” is an onomatopoeic expression for a sharp striking sound.
Starbucks Korea's recent campaign held on May 18. It used terms such as ″Tank Day″ and ″Tak on the desk.″ [SCREEN CAPTURE]
Lee’s remarks came two days after Starbucks Korea faced intense backlash over a “Tank Day” promotion launched on May 18, the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising, which was brutally suppressed by the military and reportedly left hundreds of protesting civilians dead.
“I received this as a tip and need to verify whether it is real,” the president added in his Wednesday post.
“Please help confirm it as well. I hope it is not true, but if it is, this is an extremely serious matter. People say money is the root of all [irresistible] evil, but how could anyone do something like this while being a human?”
In 2019, Musinsa deleted the advertisement and issued a formal apology.
“We deeply apologize to everyone who felt offended,” the fashion company said in a statement posted on its social media channel and website. “We have failed to filter out the [problematic] content during the review process and, above all, to properly recognize the grave historical significance of the incident.”
In another apology made in 2019, the retailer said it would take “follow-up measures to ensure such an incident would not happen again,” vowing that its action “would go beyond a simple apology.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
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