Latest news with #politicalneutrality
The Independent
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Backlash against K-pop star's deleted photo shows pressure on industry to remain apolitical
Karina, a member of the popular K-pop girl group aespa, found herself in the eye of a storm after a picture of her outfit sparked accusations of political endorsement and breaching one of Korean entertainment's unwritten rules: complete neutrality. On Wednesday, Karina posted an Instagram photo of herself dressed in a red-and-black jacket with the number 2 on it. Many people interpreted it as a subtle nod to Kim Moon Soo, candidate of the conservative People Power Party in South Korea's 3 June presidential election, whose campaign branding uses red and the ballot number 2. She deleted the post as soon as the comments started coming in and issued an apology on fan subscription platform Bubble. 'I'm sorry for making you worry. That was never my intention,' she said. 'I will be more mindful and cautious with my actions going forward. Once again, I'm sorry for causing concern.' Her agency, SM Entertainment, released a statement reinforcing her neutrality and calling her outfit 'everyday content' that was taken down once they realised the potential for misinterpretation. What looks like an overreaction to an otherwise innocuous image is quite emblematic of the intense cultural pressure placed on South Korean celebrities, especially K-pop idols, to practise near-total political abstinence. The expectations are so high that idols often avoid colours, numbers or gestures that could be misread, no matter how coincidental the context. This level of hyper-vigilance stems from the deeply embedded expectation that K-pop idols function as cultural blank slates; figures onto whom fans can project ideals, rather than individuals with opinions or personal leanings. In such an environment, even the faintest suggestion of partisanship or socially loaded behaviour can and does trigger major criticism. The latest wave of scrutiny arrived against the backdrop of a tumultuous election. South Koreans are heading to the polls on 3 June, in a snap presidential election triggered by the impeachment of president Yoon Suk Yeol in April. Yoon was removed from office after controversially invoking martial law in December 2024, a decision that led to nationwide protests and his eventual downfall in the National Assembly. The leading candidate is Lee Jae Myung of the liberal Democratic Party whose campaign has focused on economic equity and foreign policy reform. Around election season, K-pop idols are warned against wearing colours associated with the major political parties: red for the People Power Party, blue for Democratic Party, yellow and green for the Green Justice Party, and so on. Even benign hand gestures like the peace sign or a thumbs up, when done near polling places or shared online, are discouraged because they can mimic party or candidate ballot numbers. Failure to follow these unwritten rules often results in immediate backlash. In 2018, entertainer Yoo Jae Suk faced criticism for wearing a blue cap during the 2018 regional election, and in 2020 trot singer Song Ga In had to apologise for wearing a blue shirt in a video made by the National Election Commission to encourage voting. This level of scrutiny of Korean celebrities is not limited to politics but extends to historical sensitivities and even personal lives. BTS 's Suga faced fan outrage and protest wreaths after being fined for drunk-driving an electric scooter, an act that was treated by some fans as grounds for expulsion from the group. Similarly, Karina was accused of 'betrayal' by fans and forced to issue an apology last year after they found out she was dating actor Lee Jae Wook. Idols have also issued apologies for travelling to Japan, which has a fraught history with Korea, during sensitive national holidays and for making what fans have considered insensitive comments related to Korean history. However, some idols seem to have figured out a way to bypass these arbitrary rules. ZeroBaseOne's Kim Tae Rae addressed election season etiquette in a post on a fan platform where he could be seen flashing a 'V' sign, which can be interpreted as a reference to Kim Moon Soo. To avoid any issues, Kim joked that he was balancing out any speculation with the colour of his phone – blue.
Fast Company
23-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
Why Starbucks is banning orders under certain names in South Korea
Starbucks in South Korea has barred customers from using the names of South Korea's six presidential candidates in their orders ahead of next month's presidential election. A Starbucks Korea spokesperson told NBC News the policy was introduced 'in order to prevent inappropriate and abusive use of the names.' The decision comes as South Koreans have increasingly used their Starbucks' orders to make a political statement—ordering via app under presidential candidates' names, and using phrases in support of or to oppose them, forcing baristas to call them out for pickup, per NBC. Some examples of those orders include: 'arrest Yoon Suk Yeol' and '[opposition leader] Lee Jae-myung is a spy,' per the BBC. According to Starbucks, the company needs to 'maintain political neutrality during election season,' and will lift the ban on June 3 after the election, the BBC reported. Like many South Korean businesses, Starbucks is seeking neutrality amid the charged political atmosphere around the election, stemming from former President Yoon Suk Yeol's brief martial law declaration and subsequent impeachment trial, which has deeply divided the East Asian democracy. Similarly, Naver, South Korea's biggest search engine, has disabled autocomplete on search for the candidates, a common practice for the tech giant during an election cycle, according to the BBC. The six presidential candidates' names that Starbucks has banned are: Lee Jae-myung, from the country's liberal Democratic Party (DP); Kim Moon-soo, from former president Yoon Suk Yeol' conservative People Power Party (PPP); and Lee Jun-seok, Kwon Young-kook, Hwang Kyo-ahn, and Song Jin-ho. As Fast Company previously reported, Starbucks recently posted 'disappointing' earnings results for the second quarter of fiscal 2025, ending on March 30. Unlike in the previous quarter, Starbucks did not beat analyst revenue expectations, of $8.83 billion and an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of 49 cents, according to Yahoo Finance, instead posting a revenue of $8.76 billion and an adjusted EPS of 41 cents. One key metric, U.S. comparable store sales, declined 2% in Q2.
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
South Korea: Starbucks avoids brewing controversy by banning presidential candidates' names
Walk into any Starbucks in South Korea right now, and there are some names you definitely won't be hearing. Six to be exact - and they happen to be the names of the candidates running in the upcoming presidential race. That's because Starbucks has temporarily blocked customers who are ordering drinks from using these names, which would be called out by company said it needed to "maintain political neutrality during election season", adding that this would be lifted after the election on 3 June. South Korean businesses and celebrities usually strive to be seen as neutral. But it has become more crucial in recent months, as political turmoil triggered by former president Yoon Suk Yeol left the country more divided than as South Korea gears up to pick its new president following Yoon's impeachment, even the most mundane things can become politicised - a lesson Starbucks has learnt the hard recent months, it has seen an increasing number of customers ordering drinks through their app and keying in phrases such as "arrest Yoon Suk Yeol" or "[opposition leader] Lee Jae-myung is a spy" as their nicknames. Starbucks baristas had little choice but to yell out these names once the drinks were ready for collection."Our goal is to make sure every customer has a great experience in our coffeehouses," Starbucks said in a statement about its new move to ban the six presidential candidates' names."To help with that, we sometimes block certain phrases that could be misunderstood by our employees or customers — like names of political candidates with messages of support or opposition during election season to maintain neutrality."But this marks the first time it has banned the names of all the candidates running in an election. Besides Lee, the other names are Kim Moon-soo, Lee Jun-seok, Kwon Young-kook, Hwang Kyo-ahn and Song think the coffee giant is taking things a bit too far."I think people are being too sensitive. What if your real name is the same as a candidate's?" said 33-year-old Jang Seok-bin, a 27-year-old who is a regular at Starbucks, said he thought the rule was "too trivial", though he said he understood the logic behind it given the country's heightened political tensions. "After [Yoon's impeachment] I don't really talk about politics anymore. It feels like the ideological divide has grown so much that conversations often turn into arguments." Selfies and searches Starbucks is not alone. The country's biggest search engine, Naver, has disabled autocomplete and related search suggestions for candidates, as it usually does during election season.A search on Google for Lee, who is widely tipped to win the election, yields phrases like "Lee Jae-myung trial" - a reference to the fact that he is currently embroiled in several criminal trials. A search for the country's conservative presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo brings up a related suggestion for "conversion", as he is widely seen to have "converted" from being a fervent labour activist to a conservative politician. Naver said it decided to do this to "provide more accurate and fair information during the election campaign". Celebrities and public figures are also being extra careful, as they are held to high standards of political impartiality. Even the clothes they wear during election time would be highly scrutinised. Wearing colours like blue and red - which represent the country's liberal Democratic Party (DP) and conservative People's Power Party (PPP) respectively - has in the past been enough to trigger online backlash. Sometimes, even a baseball cap or necktie alone is enough to spark accusations of partisan support. During the last presidential election in 2022, Kim Hee-chul of K-pop group Super Junior was accused of being a PPP supporter when he was spotted wearing red slippers and a pink year, Shinji, lead vocalist of the popular trio Koyote, posted a black and white workout photo on Instagram a day before the general election, with the caption that she "made the photo black and white... [after] seeing the colour of my sweatpants.""Funny and sad at the same time," she added. Some celebrities go even further, deliberately wearing a mix of red and blue. One makeup artist with over a decade of experience working with K-pop stars and actors told the BBC that during elections, styling teams steer clear of politically symbolic colours. "We usually stick to neutral tones like black, white, or grey," said the make-up artist, who declined to be named. Celebrities even have to be careful when striking a pose, she added. Flashing the peace sign for a photo? That could be read as the number two - and thus an endorsement of a political candidate. In South Korea, election candidates are each assigned a Cho Jin-man, of Duksung Women's University, says it is "important to be able to talk about different things without crossing the line, and to be able to recognise and understand differences".But with so much division in the country, he adds that many are choosing to "remain silent to remain politically neutral".
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
West Point Is Supposed to Educate, Not Indoctrinate
It turned out to be easy to undermine West Point. All it took was an executive order from President Trump and a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dictating what could and couldn't be taught in the military and its educational institutions. In a matter of days, the United States Military Academy at West Point abandoned its core principles. Once a school that strove to give cadets the broad-based, critical-minded, nonpartisan education they need for careers as Army officers, it was suddenly eliminating courses, modifying syllabuses and censoring arguments to comport with the ideological tastes of the Trump administration. I will be resigning after this semester from my tenured position at West Point after 13 years on the faculty. I cannot tolerate these changes, which prevent me from doing my job responsibly. I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form. The trouble began around the time Mr. Trump was sworn in for his second term as president. That week, West Point administrators pressured me to withdraw an article about the military's obligation to be politically neutral that had been accepted for publication at the national security blog Lawfare. The administrators did not find fault with the article but said they were worried that it might be provocative to the incoming administration. Reluctantly, I complied. Then came the executive order from Mr. Trump on Jan. 27 and Mr. Hegseth's memo two days later. Mr. Trump's order prohibited any educational institution operated by the armed forces from 'promoting, advancing or otherwise inculcating' certain 'un-American' theories, including 'gender ideology' and the idea that 'America's founding documents are racist or sexist.' Mr. Hegseth's memo went further, adding that the service academies were prohibited even from providing instruction about such topics. Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth also ordered that the academies shall 'teach that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history.' These were brazen demands to indoctrinate, not educate. Whatever you think about various controversial ideas — Mr. Hegseth's memo cited critical race theory and gender ideology — students should engage with them and debate their merits rather than be told they are too dangerous even to be contemplated. And however much I admire America, uncritically asserting that it is 'the most powerful force for good in human history' is not something an educator does. Another problem with Mr. Hegseth's memo was its vagueness. Did critical race theory mean the specific work of scholars like Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw? Or did it mean any discussion of the complexities of race in society? Did gender ideology refer to the view that biological females can be men? Or did it refer to any examination of the role of gender in our lives? Rather than interpreting Mr. Hegseth's demands narrowly, West Point seems to have read them broadly. What followed was a sweeping assault on the school's curriculum and the faculty members' research. Department heads ordered reviews of syllabuses and then demanded changes. West Point scrapped two history courses ('Topics in Gender History' and 'Race, Ethnicity, Nation') and an English course ('Power and Difference'). The sociology major was dissolved and a Black history project at the history department was disbanded. Department leaders forced professors to remove from their courses works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and other women and men of color. One of my supervisors ordered professors to get rid of readings on white supremacy in Western ethical theory and feminist approaches to ethics in 'Philosophy and Ethical Reasoning,' a course I direct that is required for all cadets. A West Point student debate team was even told that it couldn't take certain positions at a forthcoming competition. And these are just some of the episodes I am aware of. (Terence Kelley, a spokesman for West Point, told The Times that while it may be unusual for a typical college or university to modify policy based on presidential executive orders or to limit research and debate, West Point personnel must abide by military regulations and policy and that such changes are 'in no way unique to the current administration.') Neither Mr. Trump's order nor Mr. Hegseth's memo mentioned faculty research. Nevertheless, on Feb. 13, the dean's office shared a memo outlining a policy requiring faculty members to get approval from their department heads to do any writing, talks, social media posting or other public expressions of our scholarship if it is affiliated with West Point. I am writing this essay without having secured approval. Though the memo does not say so, administrators have told me that any parts of my research that seem to conflict with the Trump administration's politics will not be approved. Many faculty members, including me (I study, among other things, masculinity and war), can no longer publish or promote our scholarship. (Mr. Kelley told The Times that while this policy was updated on Feb. 13, it dates to April 2023. In my experience, however, that was not how it was applied until this year. This past September, for example, I published without such approval an opinion essay in The Times about the military's obligation to be politically neutral — an argument along the lines of the essay I was asked not to publish this year in Lawfare.) I expected — naïvely, I now realize — that West Point's leaders would set an example for the cadets by raising their voices in defense of the values and mission of the institution. Instead, I have seen an eagerness to reassure the Trump administration that the academy is in its pocket. There are many costs to West Point's capitulation. One is that the academy is failing to provide an adequate education for the cadets. The cadets are no longer able to openly investigate many critical issues like race and sexuality or be exposed to unfamiliar perspectives that might expand their intellectual horizons. As for the faculty members, West Point no longer seems to recognize our duties to our disciplines and our students. Even if we preserve our jobs, we are sacrificing our profession. Furthermore, the cadets are being sent the message that the debates in which they are not allowed to engage are those the Trump administration considers settled. The lesson many cadets are learning is that it is inappropriate for them to question their own government — a dangerous message to convey to future Army officers. Then there's the message that the cadets are learning about West Point. Cadets are told constantly that they are to lead a life of honor, to choose the harder right over the easier wrong, to have moral courage. But now they are learning that these are just empty slogans. What actual leaders do, it seems, is whatever protects their jobs. I fear the cadets will remember this lesson for the rest of their lives. Finally, there's the threat to America's constitutional order. Academic freedom is important at any institution of higher learning, but it has an additional importance at a military academy. The health of our democratic system depends on the military being politically neutral. Protecting freedom of thought and speech in the academic curriculum at West Point is an important way to avoid political partisanship. By allowing the government to impose an ideological orthodoxy on its classrooms, West Point is abandoning its neutrality and jeopardizing a critical component of the very constitutional order that the military exists to protect. West Point seems to believe that by submitting to the Trump administration, it can save itself in the long run. But the damage cannot be undone. If the academy can't convincingly invoke the values of free thought and political neutrality when they are needed most, it can't accomplish its mission. Whatever else happens, it will forever be known that when the test came, West Point failed.
Fox News
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Blue cities adopt Pride flags as official symbols in bid to skirt red-state laws
Two Democrat-run cities in the Rockies are skirting state laws dictating which flags can be flown on government property, according to The Associated Press – and are granting particular attention to the LGBTQ Pride flag. Utah and Idaho both have laws on the books barring government buildings from flying most flags, save for a select few – like the American flag and military flags. Utah's law went into effect Wednesday. UTAH BANS LGBTQ+ PRIDE FLAGS, MAGA FLAGS, OTHER UNAPPROVED FLAGS IN GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, SCHOOLS In an eleventh-hour bid to circumvent the coming restrictions, Salt Lake City adopted four flags Tuesday: its existing flag, as well as modified versions of the Progress Pride, Transgender Pride and Juneteenth flags – each including the city's signature sego lily. They were presented by Mayor Erin Mendenhall for adoption via ordinance, explained her spokesperson, Andrew Wittenberg, to Fox News Digital. "My sincere intent is not to provoke or cause division," Mendenhall said, according to The AP. "My intent is to represent our city's values and honor our dear diverse residents who make up this beautiful city and the legacy of pain and progress that they have endured," she continued. Violators of the Utah law, which Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, allowed to pass without his signature, can be fined $500 per day. The law's supporters maintain that it's a matter of institutions maintaining political neutrality. STATE DEPARTMENT BLOCKS PRIDE, BLM FLAGS FROM EMBASSIES, OUTPOSTS WITH 'ONE FLAG POLICY' "This law is about keeping government spaces neutral and welcoming to all," Republican House Speaker Mike Schultz said. "Salt Lake City should focus on real issues, not political theatrics." Meanwhile, in Boise, Idaho, Mayor Lauren McLean issued a proclamation last week retroactively designating the pride flag as an official city flag. McLean has maintained that the Idaho law is not sound – and has even flown the pride flag over City Hall after it was enacted. McLean has yet to respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP McLean and Mendenhall spoke Monday night to discuss their cities' respective plans, though Wittenberg stressed to Fox News Digital that there was "no prior or additional coordination" between the cities' officials. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
