Photo: Baseball players of Paichai and Gwangju Jeil High School visit the May 18 National Cemetery. Credit: Yonhap News.
Just when Starbucks Korea thought it had put its embarrassing little celebration of a massacre behind it, the baseball players of Paichai High School 배재고등학교 brought the controversy snarling back to life. (See previous coverage, “Starbucks’ Venti Mess.”)
At the Blue Dragon Flag National High School Baseball Championship game 청룡기 전국고교야구 선수권대회 on June 29, Paichai players chanted “Tank Day” and “Let’s Go Starbucks” at players on the opposing Gwangju Jeil High School 광주제일고등학교 team, mocking the 1980 mass murder perpetrated in Gwangju by the Chun Doo-hwan 전두환 dictatorship.
Gwangju Jeil, founded in 1920, is one of South Korea’s oldest high schools and a baseball powerhouse, having produced four Major League Baseball players and the legendary Seon Dong-yeol 선동열, widely considered the greatest pitcher in Korean baseball history. The school is a major source of talent for Gwangju’s pro baseball team, the Kia Tigers, the winningest team in the Korean Baseball Organization.
Gwangju’s strength in baseball has been a rallying flag for the city through its dark times - so much so that the Chun dictatorship prohibited the Tigers from playing home games on May 18, lest the home crowd rekindle the protests on the anniversary of the massacre.
On July 1, the Korea Baseball Softball Association 대한야구소프트볼협회, the governing body for amateur baseball, suspended the Paichai baseball team from appearing in any competition for six months. The team offered its apologies in person at Gwangju Jeil, and visited the May 18 National Memorial Cemetery 국립 5.18 민주묘지.
Nevertheless, several People Power Party 국민의힘 lawmakers have criticized the penalty levied on Paichai. “The Lee Jae-myung 이재명 administration took away our Starbucks,” veteran Assembly Member Na Gyeong-won 나경원 국회의원 wrote on her Facebook page, “and is now taking away our children’s dreams.”
