Global caffeine slop purveyor Starbucks this week announced that customers in South Korea cannot use the names Lee Jae-myung, Kim Moon-soo, Lee Jun-seok, Kwon Young-kook, Hwang Kyo-ahn, or Song Jin-ho for their drink orders because baristas are sick of having to shill for the presidential candidates when calling the customers to get their mocha-frappa-fuck-a-lino, NBC News reports.
“Honestly, setting a nickname like that doesn’t seem like an easy or effective way to make a political statement,” customer Hyunwoo Park, 25, said when asked about the new policy. Young-Eh Choi, 60, was pissed. “It’s just a nickname — I think people should have the freedom to choose their own. It’s my right, so restricting it feels like too much,” said Choi, his free speech infringed upon by Starbucks.
It does not appear from the article that Yoon Suk Yeol, the recently-deposed now-former president potentially facing the death penalty for insurrection after a failed attempt to impose martial law after getting pilled on right wing conspiracy shit from YouTube, was among the names banned. Probably not that many people using it. Yoon’s successor candidate, Kim Moon-soo will face Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung – who narrowly lost to Yoon in 2022 – in a special presidential election on June 3rd. Lee’s got a solid-ish lead but Kim’s closing the gap and is working on one of the four scrub candidates to get him to pull an RFK Jr and help consolidate a coalition.