Concern grows over Chung Yong-jin's love for social media activity

Vice Chairman of Shinsegae Group Chung Yong-jin shops at E-Mart's Wolgye branch in northern Seoul, on July 19. / Screen captured from Chung Yong-jin's Instagram

By Kim Jae-heun

Unlike many scions of the country's leading conglomerates who are reluctant to make public appearances or to share their daily life with the outside world, Shinsegae Vice Chairman Chung Yong-jin loves posting pictures of himself on social media.

As of July 11, his Instagram account has over 396,000 followers. The vice chairman mainly shares photos of food he eats and places he visits but some are linked to the businesses he develops.

His posting of a newly-opened Starbucks drive-thru coffee shop in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, when he visited the place on July 26, had a positive advertising effect in terms of highlighting the details of the new Starbucks store and how cozy it is. Starbucks Korea is a joint venture between E-Mart, Shinsegae's discount store subsidiary, and Starbucks Coffee International, with each possessing 50 percent of shares here.

Chung also made a surprise visit to E-Mart's branch in Wolgye-dong, northern Seoul, to shop for home meal replacement items and he uploaded a picture of himself shopping on his social media account.

The Wolgye store is a special branch that reopened in May 28. In a countermeasure to cope with customers' massive transition to online shopping, E-Mart adopted a new strategy to strengthen its grocery sector and the Wolgye branch is the first store to apply the changes.

Chung's very-high social media literacy and his frequent use of it is also causing some controversy.

Starbucks 'summer ready bag' posted by Chung on his Instagram account on June 5 / Screen captured from Chung Yong-jin's Instagram

On June 5, he shared a photo of Starbucks' popular reward item “summer ready bag” on his Instagram with a comment reading, “The bag.”

This caused a stir as people complained that while they waited for hours to receive it and even visiting the coffee stores several times, Chung seems to have been able to obtain it effortlessly.

“I doubt he visited Starbuck 17 times to get it,” “This is annoying me as I completed the whole process of drinking seventeen beverages to receive it,” one customer said. The summer ready bag was given out to customers who purchased 17 drinks including three seasonal beverages during a promotional event held between May 21 and July 22.

The reward item gained unexpected popularity here and caused a craze that led people to wait in front of Starbucks coffee shops every morning to check the inventory.

Shinsegae said Chung received the bag himself before the reward item went viral. However, the bag went out of stock from the first day of the promotion and it turned out the retailor had lied. Chung eventually deleted the photo of his summer ready bag on social media.

“It is his personal account. We are neither using it as a marketing medium nor have plans to do so in the future,” a Shinsegae Group official said.

Chung's French-style boutique hotel L'Escape also received some criticism after giving out free summer ready bags to those who stayed overnight at the accommodation.

A lot of Starbucks customers complained that they felt comparative deprivation for the hotel's marketing event. Shinsegae Group said this is not a problem as it has secured separate stock for the hotel's promotional event.

Lee Sang-gun, a professor at Sogang University in Seoul said Chung's activity on social media in the very beginning was quite fresh and it was well received by the public. “But his frequent posting recently is bringing fatigue to the public,” Lee said.