안녕하세요, it’s Ari, your friendly Korean source and your TGIF reminder🎉 Today’s newsletter is about a heart-warming K-Drama recommendation, a Starbucks boycott case, and a spicy soup recipe. Let’s start!
📢 Sorry to say that opening virtual Korean restaurant/café where you can order in Korean is being delayed. Long-lasting pandemic is taking a toll on me, I haven’t been feeling well lately both mentally and physically. I’ll try my best to get back on track to open it as soon as possible!
🎧 You can listen to this newsletter on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other your favorite podcast platforms.
⌛ What if you can go back in time?
What if you can go back in time and change your past to live a different life with a different spouse? A romantic fantasy K-Drama, Familiar Wife is about this question. A husband who fed up with his miserable marriage and annoying wife mysteriously goes back in time and changes his past. After he wakes up, he finds that his current life has completely changed with a bigger house, a fancy car, and his first love as his new wife. He’s excited about his brand-new life but then he meets his arch enemy, his old wife, again. It’s a really good drama which makes you think about the meaning of love, life, and marriage. It’ll comfort and warm your heart❤ Available on Netflix & Viki.
☕ Why Koreans are boycotting Starbucks
It feels awkward to say this after I said I went to Starbucks lately just one newsletter ago but after a recent dramatic turn of events, my once-favorite coffee shop became the last place I’ll go to in my country.
Starbucks has been the most popular coffee shop brand in South Korea 👆 for a long time. It sells more than all no. 2 to no. 5 coffee franchises in Korea combined. Its gross sale for 2021 is expected to be over 2 trillion KRW (1.7 billion USD). Starbucks is where college students study, friends & work colleagues chat, and people have blind dates. There’s a word, 스세권 which means a part of a region where Starbucks is within walking distance. Many young Koreans want to live in 스세권 so that they can often go to the coffee shop. If you’d asked me which brand will survive the last in Korea, I would’ve said it’s Starbucks without skipping a beat until recently.
The above tweet says, “Wow, I thought I would go to Starbucks anyway despite of boycotts, but this picture just made me stay the hell away from Starbucks in Korea. (sarcastic laugh)”
From last week, Starbucks Korea boycott has started. It’s not about anti-union campaign or worker strike. It all started with Instagram posts from a heir of a Korean chaebol company which owns Starbucks Korea. He uploaded series of posts echoing past Korean dictator governments’ arguments. The country has a tragic history of dictators killing countless innocent people who demanded the right to vote. To many Koreans, his posts are almost like Korean version of Nazi endorsement in Europe. People got furious and demanded apology but he kept uploading similar posts. (He only uploaded a post saying, “If my freedom of speech offended someone, it’s my fault,” after his company’s stock plummeted.) His friends who are followers of the dictators supported him buying Starbucks tumblers, wearing his baseball team uniform and doing their hand sign ☝ which many Koreans find repulsive. And what happened after is what would happen to any county when an owner of a big company doesn’t hide to be a Nazi supporter.
His company acquired all Starbucks Korea shares from Starbucks International in September. So Starbucks Korea is almost independent from Starbucks (which earns 5% of total sales for royalty) and basically run by him. His company has many businesses including retailer. But many of them are not profitable, except for the coffee franchise. Posts saying, ‘boycotting Starbucks is the most effective way to damage the company’ went viral. People are sharing how to withdraw money from Starbucks and a list of alternatives.
The recent biggest boycott in Korea was ‘No Japan’ in 2019 which was triggered by Japanese government ordering Japanese companies to stop exporting components to South Korean semi-conductor companies. ‘No Japan’ dropped Japanese beer sales in Korea by over 90%. (Japanese beer brands like Asahi used to be the most popular in Korea.) When ‘No Japan’ was at its peak, I thought about which brand in Korea will be safe from boycotts or can’t be boycotted because it’s loved so much. The one and only brand I could think of was Starbucks. It was that popular. It’s still hard to believe that just a few Instagram posts from a chaebol heir can completely ruin the omnipotent? brand in just a few days. But it happened.
About two weeks in since the boycott started, it’s not the biggest issue on Internet or in real life anymore (since it can’t beat the upcoming Presidential election news.) Maybe the boycott won’t be successful and people won’t be able to give up their old coffee habit. But visiting Starbucks in Korea can’t be the same anymore for many people including me. So I’ll be one of many who waits for Starbucks International to rebuy Starbucks Korea from the heir or the end of pandemic so that I can visit the coffee shop in foreign countries 🛫
🥘 Budae jjigae or army stew
Budae jjigae or 부대찌개 is a spicy sausage stew. Its name and origin are very interesting. 부대 means ‘troop’ or ‘a group of soldiers,’ and 찌개 means ‘stew.’ So it’s often translated as ‘army stew’ in English. According to Wikipedia, the dish was created shortly after the armistice that ended the Korean War, using the scrounged or smuggled surplus foods from U.S. military bases. The food which is a symbol of tragic Korean history is loved by many Koreans cause it tastes so good!
Budae jjigae’s main ingredients are, kimchi, ramyeon noodle, sausage, baked beans, and a slice of cheddar cheese. If you’re American, you’ll find many of the ingredients familiar. In Korea, there are many Budae jjigae restaurants. It costs around 20 USD for two. I usually enjoy this food with a meal-kit which is much cheaper. I found two cooking videos for the dish. If you want more Korean taste, I recommend a video from a Korean chef ☝ If you want easier & international-friendly? recipe, watch this video and try for yourself!
💉 Trending hashtag, #순혈 화이자
Before I go, I want to share a funny Twitter hashtag that is trending in my country, #순혈 화이자 as I’m finishing the newsletter. It literally means, ‘pure-blooded Pfizer,’ and it refers to a person who got all three covid vaccine shots with only Pfizer. Click the hashtag to see people uploading a vaccine sticker written as ‘Pfizer’ (people get a sticker after getting a shot) and funny meme images. I think it’s trending because many young Koreans are getting a booster shot lately and many of them are getting Pfizer. I’m 순혈 화이자, too;;
Thanks for reading! If you liked my newsletter, ❤ or share it to make my day :D or support me by buying my Korean vocabulary exercise book. It’s available on my shop (e-book) and Amazon (paperback). Use discount code ‘happynewyear’ to get 15% off when you buy an e-book.
Leave a question, what you want to know about Korean culture/news/trends or a song recommendation to get me out of my pandemic-breakdown🙃 in comments! See you the week after next or sooner! 안녕👋
아녕하세요 아라 씨! Thanks for this week's podcast, and I'm looking forward to seeing the virtual cafe idea! I hope that you feel better and stay safe :) A song recommendation I have is Anpanman and Life Goes On by BTS, it always uplifts my day when I feel down.