Comedian to buy bubble teas for half-million event winners
Yoo Sang-moo / Korea Times file
Comedian Yoo Sang-moo, also the CEO of Taiwanese dessert cafe franchise Hou Mei Bing, is buying bubble teas for half a million people who were selected after participating in the cafe’s online event held last Friday.
The cafe’s official webpage posted a notice on Wednesday that the winners must visit the website until June 30 and verify their identification to receive the cafe’s mobile coupon for a free bubble tea worth 4,000 won ($3.58).
The event asked participants to type in Korean “Yoo Sang-moo is handsome” on the nation’s biggest search engine, Naver, on Jun 12, Yoo’s birthday. The search result gave the participants a queue number. Those who were given “39” on the last two digits of the number won the event.
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Hou Mei Bing store in Gangnam-gu district, above, and mango bingsu sold at the store / Courtesy of Naver blog
The notice said about 110 million netizens participated in the event on Friday and Saturday. It was difficult to sort out the winners because the numbers of the participants were “much more than anticipated,” the cafe said.
Yoo posted a joke on his Facebook webpage on Friday afternoon, saying the event, which he said he simply started because he wanted to hear from people that he was handsome, was out of control and was about to bankrupt his business.
Yoo, who debuted in 2004 as comedian with the state-owned broadcaster KBS, launched the cafe in June 2014 after establishing Chooreup Co. a month before.