[기자가만난세상] I am grateful to Emergency Committee Chairman Han Dong-hoon, who made me a middle class person in an instant.

I remember around 2008 when I returned to school after being discharged from the military. While I was waiting for class after lunch, one of my classmates came into the classroom carrying Starbucks coffee. For me, who ate 1,700 won for lunch at the school cafeteria in the student center, I couldn’t understand the friend who drank coffee that cost more than the price of the meal. “Are you a ‘doenjang man’? “What kind of Starbucks coffee are you,” he scolded, half jokingly. At that time, the only coffee I could get was vending machine coffee that cost 200 won or canned coffee that cost less than 1,000 won. People around me who drank Starbucks’ high-quality coffee were seen as rich or pretentious.

Now, 16 years later, I go to Starbucks quite often. I think I go once or twice a week. Starbucks is very laptop user-friendly and has a store across the street in major downtown areas, making it easy to access. Moreover, giving and receiving Starbucks gifticons has become commonplace, so if you use the gifticon you received on your birthday, at least 4 to 5 months will pass. I am also writing this column while drinking a 4,500 won iced Americano at a Starbucks near my house.

Is it because my class is different from 16 years ago, when I was an ordinary college student, and now, as a reporter worker for 14 years? That’s not it. Even now, 16 years ago, I am still a commoner. Nevertheless, when analyzing the reasons for the change in attitude toward Starbucks, the perception of the food and beverage called coffee has changed, and there is a so-called price resistance that a 4,500 won coffee is now worth eating amidst the price of sundae soup or kimchi stew for 10,000 won. This is probably because it has decreased a lot.

However, I recently upgraded my class from working class to middle class. It’s not that salaries suddenly increased significantly or stocks skyrocketed. Thankfully, Han Dong-hoon, Chairman of the People Power Party Emergency Response Committee, recently made it happen. On the 5th, Chairman Han visited a Starbucks store near Gyeongdong Market in Seoul and said, “Starbucks is actually a powerhouse in the industry, right? greatly. “This is not a place where ordinary people come,” he said.

Of course, that is not what the head of the emergency committee wanted to say, ‘Starbucks = a cafe used by the middle class and above.’ I know well that his intention was to say that Starbucks near Gyeongdong Market donates 300 won to the merchant association for every drink sold, which is an example of a win-win model between large corporations and traditional markets.

It’s okay to start with the main point, but I think it should have been based on the premise that it was a sensitive class-related statement. The original meaning he wanted to convey was lost due to unnecessary embarrassment, and various controversies aggravated, such as ‘Isn’t Chairman Han’s class consciousness coming out implicitly?’ as it was connected to his class as a graduate of Gangnam School District 8.

This is not the first time that Chairman Han’s inadvertent remarks sparked controversy. When he visited Busan last January, he said, ‘When I was relegated to Busan under the Democratic Party government, I watched Lotte baseball at Sajik.’ However, from January to June 2020, when he was appointed and served as Deputy Chief Prosecutor of the Busan High Prosecutors’ Office, the KBO League opened only in May and was played without spectators due to COVID-19. If he said he watched baseball while at his post, he either broke the quarantine rules and watched it secretly, or it’s a lie. The Sajik Stadium famous ‘Bongdari cheering’ photo presented as an explanation was also taken in 2008.

Did you say that those who rise by the sword will perish by the sword? One of the reasons why Chairman Han was able to become the leader of the ruling party after serving as the Minister of Justice is his speaking skills that put down Democratic Party members in a pleasant way. Nowadays, when every statement he makes becomes a news story, his speaking skills seem to be poison to him.

All humans make mistakes. The only way to make up for this is a quick acknowledgment and an honest apology. Coming up with the sophistry that ‘I watched Lotte baseball in Sajik’ does not mean ‘I watched baseball at Sajik Stadium’ only makes the poison worse.

Reporter Nam Jeong-hoon, Ministry of Culture and Sports

[ⓒ 세계일보 & Segye.com, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]