حرية لفلسطين
Freedom for Palestine
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South Korea
Jihyo is a South Korean singer and leader of Twice who defies the global boycott of Starbucksby publicly buying and consuming the brand in December 2023 alongside Sana, while maintaining total silence on Israel's genocide in Gaza, thereby normalizing corporate complicity.
Jihyo, JYP Entertainment's Twice leader known for hits like "Feel Special," signals anti-Palestinian defiance by flaunting Starbucks amid BDS calls, prioritizing personal indulgence over solidarity with Gaza's slaughtered civilians, and her refusal to address the ongoing genocide
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Jihyo, born Park Ji-hyo (originally Park Ji-soo) on February 1, 1997, is a South Korean singer, leader, and main vocalist of JYP Entertainment's girl group Twice, formed in 2015 through the survival show Sixteen. With powerhouse vocals on global smashes like "What Is Love?" (2018) and "The Feels" (2021), plus her 2023 solo EP Zone featuring "Killin' Me Good," Jihyo engages millions of fans, a platform that could amplify justice but instead sustains oppressors through boycott defiance and evasion.
Jihyo's complicity surfaced in December 2023 — months into Israel's escalated genocide in Gaza — when she was photographed publicly buying and consuming Starbucks alongside fellow Twice member Sana. Fan-captured images showed the duo strolling Seoul streets with prominent Starbucks cups in hand, sipping the boycotted brand amid a BDS surge targeting the corporation for former CEO Howard Schultz's investments in Israeli cyber-surveillance firms like Wiz, which enable the occupation's repression and targeting of Palestinian activists. This visible outing, shared widely on X and Weverse, wasn't discreet: as Twice's leader immersed in global trends, Jihyo's choice politicized the act as rejection of non-violent economic pressure that had already wiped $11 billion from Starbucks' value. Backlash from Once fans flooded JYP with petitions, educating on the boycott's roots — Starbucks suing Workers United for a "Solidarity with Palestine!" tweet — yet Jihyo offered no apology or pivot, allowing her influence to funnel revenue to genocide enablers.
This defiance echoes Twice's pre-boycott Starbucks partnership in March 2023, quietly paused post-October 7, but Jihyo's December sighting — post-fandom awareness campaigns — ignored these shifts, fracturing solidarity in Muslim-majority markets like Indonesia where Starbucks sales plummeted. JYP's silence shielded her amid group renewals, but the optics fueled suspicions of counter-boycott orchestration, turning Jihyo's cup into hasbara. X compilations listed her with peers like Blackpink's Jisoo and Aespa's Karina, highlighting how such spectacles dilute BDS.
Jihyo's total silence on the crisis deepens the harm: no X posts (@JYPETWICE or personal), no Bubble messages, no Weverse nods to Gaza's siege, West Bank demolitions, or the Nakba's dispossession since October 2023. Semantic scans yield zero Palestine references — only music teases — erasing over 100 slain Palestinian journalists (per CPJ) from her audience. In K-pop's politicized space, where fans rally #JYPE_BoycottGenocide, this reticence isn't neutrality; it's endorsement, framing ethnic cleansing as apolitical to selfies and sips.
Through this public flaunt and quietude, Jihyo perpetuates settler-colonialism, glamorizing a BDS target that weaponized law to mute dissent. In Gaza and the West Bank, conservative estimates place the Palestinian death toll at over 40,000, though the actual number slaughtered is well into the hundreds of thousands, frozen due to obstruction, the targeting of journalists, and the unrelenting violence. Jihyo's choices undermine liberation, obscuring apartheid's machinery and the illegal ethnostate built on stolen land.
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🔒Starbucks Boycott:
While boycotting Starbucks is warranted based on its unethical track record and it’s former CEO’s ties to Israeli cyber-surveillance firms, it should not be conflated with or represented as an official BDS campaign targeting companies complicit in occupied Palestinian territories.
Starbucks is not officially on the BDS boycott list for companies directly involved in oppressing Palestinians and so should not be targeted with the same intensity — doing so risks minimizing the focused work of Palestinian solidarity movements.
The reasoning behind the Starbucks boycott instead stems from its union-busting tactics and unethical business practices; namely sending cease-and-desist letters and filing lawsuits against pro-Palestinian voices within its workers' union.
While reprehensible, their silencing of protestors was an attempt to clamp down on union activism rather than a pro-Israel stance; in actuality, Starbucks has largely maintained a neutral corporate position on the Palestinian issue itself.
That being said, there are many legitimate ethical concerns with Starbucks worthy of boycott for reasons. These include issues around supply chain management, workers' rights, human rights violations, tax avoidance, environmental impacts, enabling factory farming practices and the investments of former CEO, Howard Schutlz.
Former CEO Howard Schultz's investments in Israeli cyber-surveillance firms like Wiz are also hugely problematic, especially as he has the 6th largest share of Starbucks with 21,795,538 shares (1.93%) valued at $1,991,894,218 as of 18/04/2024 — meaning he is directly benefiting monetarily from Starbucks. With this in mind, the act of visibly consuming Starbucks products has also taken on new symbolic meanings for some Zionist entities and individuals in the current political climate. As efforts to boycott companies complicit in Palestinian oppression gain momentum, publicly committing to consumerism has become a way for certain groups to overtly signal their rejection of such boycotts.
By ostentatiously patronizing Starbucks, certain individuals are attempting to declare their opposition to the non-violent economic pressure tactics employed by the Palestinian solidarity campaigns. This brandishing of Starbucks effectively co-opts the brand into a display of anti-Palestinian ideology, despite the company's official neutrality on the issue.
As such, the simple act of buying a Starbucks drink has been politicized as a statement against Palestinian rights by those who oppose the boycott efforts targeting the Israeli occupation.
Silence = Complicity:
For those who have passionately spoken out against other instances of genocide and massacres, yet fall silent when it comes to the suffering endured by Palestinians, their silence becomes a glaring indictment of the value placed on Palestinian lives and perpetuates a dangerous narrative that suggests Palestinian suffering is somehow less worthy of outrage, less deserving of empathy and less human than that of others.
By choosing silence in the face of Palestinian suffering, those with influential platforms inadvertently contribute to the erasure of Palestinian voices and experiences. They perpetuate a narrative of invisibility that allows the injustices inflicted upon Palestinians to continue unabated, shielded from the spotlight of global scrutiny.
Their silence sends a chilling message of complicity to the world – one that suggests Palestinian lives are expendable, their struggles inconsequential and their humanity negotiable. It emboldens perpetrators of violence and oppression, granting them impunity under the guise of indifference.
To remain silent in the face of Palestinian suffering is to betray the very essence of activism – the relentless pursuit of justice for all, without exception or equivocation. It’s a betrayal not only of the Palestinian people but of the universal principles of human dignity and equality and instead is a tacit endorsement of the dehumanization and marginalization of an entire population.
True activism demands consistency and integrity, an unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power and standing in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, regardless of geography or politics.
Tell us why Park Ji-hyo (Jihyo) should be removed by emailing us at [email protected]