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 mask.
Last 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.