It was unintentional on the part of Starbucks at large. The CEO of Starbucks Korea intentionally chose to integrate anti-democratic references into the marketing [1]:
> Did a dumb American exec misunderstand what Tank meant? Nope! Starbucks Korea is owned by a Korean billionaire who supports the old regime.
> Every new tumbler is 503 ml. Random size, eh?
> A right wing talking point is that "activists" are exaggerating and "only 503 people" were killed on 5/18.
> The slogan for the Starbucks campaign is "Slam it on your desk!" Random, eh?
> On 5/18 a young man was tortured to death in police custody. The cop said "I just slammed my hand on the desk and he died."
[...]
> Every Western article about this is like "is it too unwoke to make a pun on a day of remembrance?" but that's not what this is, this is a billionaire announcing to the entire country "We should not be a democracy, and I'm glad for every person who died trying to make it one. Suck it."
[1] https://bsky.app/profile/ryanestrada.com/post/3mmi5yrbqps25
Tangentially, I find it hard to believe that
> Shinsegae’s investigation found no evidence the Starbucks campaign was deliberate
(referring even to the marketers, who were placed on probation [1]) considering that a marketer who is capable of making an AI come up with slogans for a specific day of the year is also capable of asking why the AI chose that particular day.
[1] https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1...
