Starbucks Korea will close all of its stores across the country early on 22 June as it rolls out staff training following public anger over a marketing campaign linked to one of South Korea’s most painful modern historical events.

The coffee chain’s operator, Shinsegae Group, said stores would shut at 3pm for training on historical awareness and social sensitivity.

The move follows backlash over Starbucks Korea’s ‘Tank Day’ tumbler promotion, which launched on the anniversary of the May 18 Gwangju Uprising. The 1980 pro-democracy protests were violently suppressed by South Korea’s then military government, which deployed troops and tanks.

Starbucks Korea faced widespread criticism over the campaign and suffered a “very significant” drop in sales following the controversy.

Shinsegae, whose E-Mart division owns Starbucks Korea, said the training reflected how seriously it viewed the incident and its commitment to preventing similar mistakes in future.

Head office staff at Starbucks Korea and executives from E-Mart will take part in the same training on 17 June at Shinsegae’s in-house training centre. Shinsegae chairman Chung Yong-jin and affiliate chief executives will attend a separate session on 24 June.

Chung has already issued a public apology over the controversy.

The historical awareness session will be led by a history professor from Sungkyunkwan University and will cover major events in South Korea’s modern and contemporary history since the 1950s.

A separate social sensitivity session, led by a sociology professor from the same university, will examine how companies should approach topics including history, labour, gender and human rights in marketing and wider corporate activity.

Shinsegae said the 22 June closure would be the first nationwide early shutdown of Starbucks Korea stores since the chain entered the country in 1999.

Starbucks Korea will also overhaul its marketing approval process. The changes will include a new social-sensitivity checklist covering history, commemorative dates, politics, disasters, military issues, gender, violence and hate speech.

Starbucks Korea had more than 2,000 stores in the country at the end of 2024, according to its annual impact report. It is also South Korea’s largest coffee chain by customer payments, according to data firm WISEAPP.

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