{"id":41698,"date":"2026-07-20T20:31:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T18:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=41698"},"modified":"2026-07-20T20:31:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T18:31:31","slug":"rechts-weht-wie-der-wind-ein-becher-namens-panzer-ein-freund-der-trumps-und-eine-bewegung-ohne-grenze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/rechts-weht-wie-der-wind-ein-becher-namens-panzer-ein-freund-der-trumps-und-eine-bewegung-ohne-grenze\/","title":{"rendered":"Right Wing Blows Like the Wind - A Cup Named Tank, a Friend of the Trumps, and a Movement Without Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes a single word tells the whole story. On May 18, Starbucks Korea put a new insulated mug on its shelves and called it Tank, with the launch event labeled Tank Day. A mug is as harmless as kitchenware, but the date turns that piece of kitchenware into a weapon. In South Korea, May 18 is no ordinary day. It marks the beginning of the Gwangju Uprising, those 10 days in 1980 when citizens rose against the military dictatorship and tanks rolled through the streets of the southwestern city until resistance was crushed beneath their tracks. Anyone who names a product Tank on that day knows exactly what they are doing. Coincidences do not stumble this precisely into the bull's-eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The man behind that cup is Chung Yong-jin. He not only owns Starbucks Korea but also Shinsegae, the country's largest retail empire. He is a longtime friend of Donald Trump Jr. and a right wing businessman who has never hidden his political views. Public outrage over the Tank mug grew so quickly that on June 21, more than 2,000 Starbucks stores closed early so 24,000 employees could receive education about their country's history. The company lost 2.1 billion won, about $1.4 million, in missed sales. They paid it the way people pay a fine that is cheaper than facing the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chung Yong-jin<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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But the mug is only what people can see. Underneath it, money flows, and it flows to a young woman named Mina Kim. Educated in the United States, conservative, Christian, she founded Build Up Korea in 2023, a Korean version of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, right down to the jokes. During Kirk's visit in September 2025, she laughingly asked whether he planned to sue her for copying him. Kirk laughed too. He was the keynote speaker at her annual conference, supplied with endless coffee donated by Chung's company. Just weeks later, Kirk was dead, murdered, and Kim built him a memorial of flowers and candles in the middle of Seoul. That is how quickly a role model becomes a martyr, and a martyr carries a movement farther than any speaker ever could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mina Kim and Mino Kim are the leading faces of the movement Build Up Korea, which has been described as part of the far right, and they organize the conferences together. Charlie Kirk attended as an international keynote speaker.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Kim also sells diapers. The brand EveryLife, whose stated mission is to bring more babies into the world, belongs to a business network involving Donald Trump Jr. In the United States it barely makes a ripple in online retail. In Korea it sits on Chung's shelves inside a company generating $20 billion in annual revenue. Think about that for a moment. The son of the American president profits from diapers sold in South Korea, and the same hand selling those diapers is pulling the country's youth further to the right. Rarely has an ideology been so honest about the products it sells. It begins at birth and does not end at the ballot box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mina Kim and Mino Kim are the leading faces of the movement Build Up Korea, which has been described as part of the far right, and they organize the conferences together. Charlie Kirk attended as an international keynote speaker.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Why the movement attracts followers comes down to a fracture running through South Korea's younger generation. The country educates its people like almost no other nation on earth. Seventy seven percent of women and 63 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 34 have college degrees. Yet 13 percent of those young men are unemployed and have stopped looking for work because the promise education made to them has vanished into thin air. A person who was promised a place but never given one starts looking somewhere else, and misogynistic online communities are waiting with open arms, a Korean echo of America's incel culture. Frustrated expectations turn into anger, anger turns into loyalty. That is how the rank and file of a movement is built, not from conviction but from disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On May 18, South Korea's national day of remembrance for the Gwangju Massacre, Starbucks Korea came under fire after one of its stores promoted a \"Tank Day\" campaign, a phrase widely interpreted as mocking the military's use of tanks against civilians. President Lee Jae-myung and senior Democratic Party leaders publicly criticized the company, prompting the CEO to apologize and announce disciplinary action. At the same time, far right groups declared Starbucks a \"patriotic brand\" and urged supporters to buy its products, further escalating the political conflict ahead of the upcoming local elections.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n