In 2023, Starbucks came under fire for allegedly terminating and suing employees who support Palestine in the recent humanitarian crisis, leading to people calling for a boycott campaign against the beverage chain.
As a result, celebrities who consume Starbuck products quickly fell to criticisms, and K-pop idols are no exception.
Among those, Jeon Somi, who was accused of intentionally promoting Starbucks in a TikTok video, received the harshest comments. The female idol eventually deleted her video and issued a statement, but criticisms never died down.
Most recently, it was LE SSERAFIM’s Yunjin that was spotted drinking Starbucks. However, netizens can’t help but notice how compared to Somi, the criticisms towards Yunjin were way lighter.
In fact, many people are already defending Yunjin within mere days of her Starbucks controversy. Meanwhile, the backlash targeting Somi lasted for months, and saw no sign of stopping.
not even three days later… and after three months somi still can’t post anything without getting mass harassed 😭 https://t.co/OB0lf3RIQf
— sandy² (@daahlis) March 12, 2024
Against the accusations of “discriminating” between Somi and Yunjin, however, some netizens pointed out that English-speaking idols like Somi and Yunjin are actually condemned more than other K-pop idols.
why are only idols who are english speakers beign harassed for drinking sb? First somi, now yunjin. We know they’re not the only idols who have done this but somehow when it’s a non english speaker no one cares. We should hold all of them accountable without harassing them.
— Nico🐧 (@tylsw13) March 13, 2024
These people also pointed out that BLACKSWAN’s Fatou previously acknowledged that Koreans do know about the Starbucks boycott, so claims that Korean idols being less aware than English speakers are groundless.
fatou from blackswan said “starbucks is cancelled here in korea” “we don’t like starbucks over here (in korea)” . meaning they are all very much AWARE of the global boycotting. idols who don’t boycott just don’t care about palestinian lives and solidarity and that’s just that.
— — リノ ˚◡̈⁺ ˚ 🍉・₊✧ (@snugdeal3r) March 12, 2024
However, amid all these, many just wanted the arguments to stop, stating that people are turning a serious issue into a meaningless fanwar instead of focusing on supporting Palestine.
Source: Krb, X