Lotte Dept. Store under fire for asking customer to remove union vest

A department store employee speaks to a customer wearing a Korean Metal Workers’ Union vest at the food court of Lotte Department Store’s Jamsil branch in Seoul, Wednesday. The video, showing the store employee asking the customer to remove his vest, appeared on social media Wednesday and garnered over 7,400 retweets as of Thursday. Captured from X

A confrontation between a customer wearing a labor union vest and staff at Lotte Department Store’s Jamsil branch has ignited fierce criticism online, fueling debate over possible discrimination against union members and labor activists.

A video posted late Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter, shows staff at the store’s food court approaching a man wearing a vest affiliated with the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU), which is part of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and represents about 185,000 members.

The post, which garnered over 7,400 retweets as of Thursday, read, "It happened again … If you wear a message, you can’t come in. Slogans are not allowed because they reveal an ideology. So people wearing union vests are not even allowed to eat?"

In the footage, an employee asks the customer to remove his vest, saying that "a certain level of etiquette is needed in public places." The customer replies, "We don’t deserve this kind of treatment just because we’re wearing the vests … We wear these even in front of the Cheong Wa Dae," referring to the former presidential residence in central Seoul. The Lotte employee emphasizes that the store is "private property," to which the customer counters, "Then you’re admitting this standard set by the department store reflects hate against laborers."

A Lotte Department Store official told The Korea Times that staff asked the customer, who came in as part of a group, to remove the vest after nearby patrons complained of commotion and said they felt uneasy.

"The customer refused, as he had the right to do, but we did not eject him and he finished his meal as planned," the official said, adding that the company has no internal rule banning union-related clothing.

According to the KMWU, eight members of the group and three accompanying supporters entered the department store for dinner around 7 p.m., with some members dressed in their union vests and one in a union hat. An employee at the entrance asked them to remove the hat and vests, and the member wearing a hat removed it. They kept their vests on and sat down in the basement food court.

Two additional staff members then approached the group and again demanded that the vests be removed, saying the store was private property, that they were required to follow internal rules and that the clothing was making other patrons uncomfortable. Because of the confrontation, three members of the group left without eating due to time constraints, while the remaining eight stayed and finished their meal.

The KMWU condemned the incident as a stark example of persistent prejudice against organized labor.

"This scene shows, very frankly, how Korean society still views unions," a KMWU spokesperson said. "For many metalworkers, the vest is not just symbolic — it’s part of daily workwear that expresses our identity as workers. The customer was not protesting or disrupting business. Asking for the vest to be removed just because it bore a union logo is unjustified."

Online backlash against Lotte has intensified, with many users calling the staff’s response "excessive" and "a display of hate against workers," and questioning whether it is reasonable for a department store to regulate customer clothing.

The KMWU representative added that the case reflects a wider pattern of subtle but ongoing discrimination and hostility that union members encounter in everyday life. Even when "entering ordinary buildings or simply walking down public streets," members are often told to remove their vests, the spokesperson said.

Under Korea’s Constitution and the Labor Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, union membership and expression are protected as part of the "three labor rights" — the rights to organize, bargain collectively and take collective action.

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea has also interpreted discrimination based on "social status" and "labor union activities" in employment and in access to goods and services as falling within its mandate, meaning that restricting a customer’s use of a public food court solely because they are visibly a union member can be criticized as an unfair and potentially discriminatory limitation on equal service.