Drinking culture in Korea is no joke.

Drinking culture in Korea is no joke.

Before I post this article, I want to be clear that as a woman and a Christian, I can’t help but  have a negative feeling about Korean drinking culture, although I drink sometimes.

According to a 2014 study by Euromonitor, South Koreans drink 13.7 shots of liquor per week on average which is the most in the world which means Koreans drink twice as much liquor as Russians does and more than four times as much as Americans.

Drinking culture in South Korea is a big part of life. Many foreigners are surprised to see how incredibly accessible it is to get liquor in Korea and how liberal Korean people are when it comes to drinking liquor in public places. It is very common that a lot of celebrities such as TV and movie stars and famous singers, brag about how many bottles of Soju(Korean popular alcohol) they can drink, regardless of their age in talk shows. Many times they have enormous fun sharing about their particular behavior when they get drunk in those programs.

One of the most interesting things is that there is a lot of drinking Etiquettes which have made many Koreans become heavy drinkers. Korean society has a strict norm that if your social superiors offer you a drink, you can’t say no to them but must accept every single one of the drinks they offer as a sign of showing respect. Sometimes, being offered a lot of drinks by your social superior should be seen as a compliment towards you. It goes without saying that you should accept your drink with both hands. Korean people always encourage you to bottom up the drink and fill the glass as soon as you empty it because it’s also the norm that somebody has to fill your glass instead of you. For this reason, it is impolite to leave your fellow drinker’s glass empty.

If you have a car and know that you will get drunk, you can use a chauffeur service to let a designated driver drive your own car with you. One of my American friends said that American people can’t imagine giving their car keys to others even though they are hired for designated driving. She said that Korea probably is a trustworthy society. I guess you never see this service anywhere else but Korea.

To be quite honest, Korean people lack social skills. Especially, in case of Korean guys, they don’t seem to know how to build a relationship without drinking liquor. My sister married an Italian guy and they are running a guest house in Sicily. Her husband was shocked to see Korean guys passing by a bunch of women without saying hi to them, those who stayed in the same guest house as them and was sitting in the living room. It is so sad to see Korean guys sitting in the same room with their noses in their phones without making any efforts to ease the awkward atmosphere. Since not saying hi to strangers is so common in Korea, sometimes Korean people mistake a person who is very kind and nice to them for a salesman who tries to sell something to them.

The cause of lacking social skill goes all the way back to the old days. I mentioned in another post about why many Koreans have xenophobia; by the same token, Korean people have been poor at making new friends. Korean ancestors as rice farmers who had been living for generations in the same village didn’t have to have social skills to make new relationships with new people. Not only almost all of the villagers knew a person, they also knew his parents, his grandparents and his great grandparents as well.

As we are going through a modern society, the life style has changed and Korean people haven’t learned the skill which is essential to the modern social life. I guess a lot of Korean guys depend on drinking when it comes to establishing a relationship with others. Under the hierarchical and collective atmosphere, Korean people are highly self-conscious which makes us stay rigid and nervous all the time that prevents us from being close to anyone easily. Korean people use drinks as a way of loosening themselves up and make them less self-conscious, so that they can express themselves easily, unfortunately, many times, they are grossly over the top like lying unconscious on the street, getting involved in a fight with others, vandalizing others’ properties and drinking and driving which are considered as something easily forgivable and petty in Korea. Another problem is that their relationship still seems to remain in the primal place where it started the minute they became sober next morning no matter how much they drank together and acted like they were brother when they got drunk last night. Many times, they still give the cold shoulder to one another. Sometimes, I can’t help but feel like they are just chicken being afraid of reaching out in their sober senses.

Some of Korean people drink to get drunk. Korea is a very competitive and stressful society. They want to air it out and try to make themselves insensible to the stress and burden they must bear everyday by drinking. I remember a guy who appeared on  TV and was alcoholic; his family suffers from it. His excuse was that he drinks because he is so miserable about himself being incapable and weak which makes his family face double torture. There are thousands of guys like him in Korea.

If you are lucky, you can surely meet some Korean people who have great social skills and can make gentle and vibrant conversations with you without drinking.