Sarah Jeong, brilliant Korean-American editor at The Verge. Responded to a request that she Koreasplain this scandal with what follows:
OK! So my suspicion here is that the role of AI in this fiasco is overexaggerated because the company is trying to find a scapegoat that isn't "Korean Starbucks is run by conservatives and Korean conservatives' brains have rotted from the inside out."
That said, part of why Korean conservatism is so insane at the moment is (like everywhere else) because of AI brainrot and a general disregard for truth.
But trivializing the Gwangju massacre is basically baked into shitty conservatism at this point. The actual death toll numbers is a decades-old politicized fight. It's why the region itself is a liberal stronghold; nobody likes being told you deserved it or that the violence you saw was fake.
People looking for the reason why no one said no to the terrible Tank Day promo, which is obviously conservative brainrot. A bunch of managers are claiming they didn't properly supervise an AI-generated campaign. IDK it just smells like deflection for a culture of deferring to a chaebol's bad ideas
https://bsky.app/profile/sarahjeong.bsky.social/post/3mnpjbrdca22e
#Korea #AI