The Country With The World's Worst Drinking Problem.

[nana-the-dwarf.livejournal.com]

Seoul, South Korea - A young woman is hunched over a toilet bowl in a coffee shop in downtown Seoul, her dishevelled hair masking her face.

A police officer tries to rouse her, but there is no response. "I think she's totally passed out," says Officer Hazel Chang.

Chang and her colleague carry the woman to their car, and take her to the police station where medics examine her and officers phone her parents.

It is just one of many alcohol-fuelled incidents the police see during a typical night on the streets of Seoul, the South Korean capital, where people can be seen staggering about precariously and veering dangerously into traffic.




Here, alcohol is an essential part of daily life for many, with South Koreans drinking more hard liquor than anyone else in the world, according to the research firm Euromonitor.

It is cheap, considered a must if you want to get ahead in business and viewed as a way to relieve stress in a society with some of the world's longest working hours.

But South Korea is also home to more alcoholics than any other country, and alcohol-related social costs amount to more than $20bn a year, Ministry of Health and Welfare estimates show.

Every few days, Suh Seung-Beom, a banker in Seoul, gets business contacts and friends together for drinking sessions.

Like most Koreans, their drink of choice is soju, a spirit made from rice.

On a recent night out, it was not long before Suh and his associates were feeling the effects of the potent liquor.

But he denies that getting drunk is the goal of these marathon drinking sessions. "It's just a means to build bonds in business and with people. At work we can't be so open. But here we can make memories," he tells Al Jazeera.

One of Suh's drinking partners, Brent Lee, who works for the Korea Federation of Banks, does not believe that he and his friends drink too much.

He says drinking alcohol is beneficial to society because it helps people relieve stress. The police officers who patrol Seoul's busiest entertainment district disagree.

"I think drinking is a problem"

Their beat is the busiest in the country, and almost every call they get involves someone who has drunk too much.

Officer Chang, a former schoolteacher, has been shocked by the level of drinking she has encountered since joining the force two months ago.

"I think drinking is a problem…a big problem," she says.


South Korean police carry an unconscious drinker out of a coffee shop in Seoul, South Korea. Managers of the shop say she came in drunk, and when she passed out, her friends left her. [Steve Chao/Al Jazeera]

Officer Chang's partner, Choi Kyung-reol, says in recent years there has been an increase in the number of calls police receive involving people who have drunk too much.

"We're especially seeing more women taking to the bottle heavily. It's really heartbreaking," says Officer Choi.

"I don't see us making much difference out here. People are drinking and partying harder. And often in cases when we intervene to help, they get violent."

Public health experts say part of the problem is that there are no laws restricting binge drinking.

Knocked out.

On average, South Koreans consume 14 shots of hard liquor a week, while Americans drink about three and Russians about six, according to Euromonitor statistics.

"It leads to all kinds of illnesses including liver disease, yet there are no government guidelines to say how much is too much," says Chun Sung-soo, from the Korea Public Health Association.

Chun says there is a lack of awareness about the health risks of drinking heavily.


After public pressure, South Korea's government is considering banning celebrities under the age of 24 from appearing in liquor ads.[Steve Chao/Al Jazeera]

He says the government invests only a small fraction of what it makes in taxes from the sale of alcohol in public awareness campaigns.

"For 20 years, we've been proposing policies that can drastically reduce alcohol consumption - like increasing the price, regulating how much is sold, limiting ads … but they never pass in the national assembly," he says.

Chun believes politicians are under pressure from liquor companies not to take action. One man taking on the big liquor firms is Kim Jin.

Kim is the first in Korea to launch a class-action lawsuit against firms using celebrities in advertisements to promote alcohol.

"People obviously look at these advertisements and see celebrities downing liquor. Because they're so famous, naturally this encourages consumers to drink more. It leads to overdrinking and people getting knocked out."


Ham Soonbok, aka the 'Bomb Shot Aunty', is known to hold legendary drinking parties at her restaurant. Many come from all over South Korea to try her various cocktails. [Steve Chao/Al Jazeera]

Kim knows better than most the consequences of drinking too much.

He has been an alcoholic for decades, spent all his earnings on liquor and lost his marriage.

"Whenever I started drinking, I wouldn't eat or drink anything else. I'd just keep downing liquor for 40 days straight. I often ended up in hospital and couldn't work. In the end … I lost my wife," he says.

He now suffers from cirrhosis of the liver, a chronic condition caused by overdrinking. But he admits that he is still drinking.

While Kim offers a cautionary tale, Korea's younger generation shows no sign of letting go of the culture of drinking to excess.

Jiyeon Shin, a university student, says she usually goes out drinking five times a week with friends.

She often studies 18 hours a day and says stress is what drives her and her friends to drink.

"I think maybe now I've become a bit of an alcoholic," she says. "It's usually me who initiates the drinking and it often ends up with throwing up and hangovers."

Asked whether she could ever imagine a day when South Koreans drink less, Jiyeon is adamant.

"Absolutely not. Liquor is something that's naturally shared between friends and family. I think Korean drinking culture is very uplifting. So I don't think the day we have less will ever come…nor should it."




From the documentary "South Korea's Hangover."

===

Sources: Aljazeera.com, Quartz.

===

Quite an interesting read.

South Korea's drinking culture is something I'll never fully comprehend, and as an outsider, I most likely don't have to, but it's still fascinating to hear all these stories about Korean's drinking habits and I can't help but compare it to my own country's drinking culture.

Have any interesting anecdotes involving drinking in Korea, Omona?

Comments

[laeryn.livejournal.com]

Haven't read but I watched the video the other day and it really surprised me. I too was comparing it with my country, and even though we're the birthplace of botellón (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botell%C3%B3n), idt we drink nearly as much, nor this... binge-ish (totally made that up, sorry, you get it, I hope?). That's a generalization and I might be wrong, of course.

Have any interesting anecdotes involving drinking in Korea, Omona?

Flavored soju is delicious (SERIOUSLY) but it gave me and my friend The Worst Hangover Of Our Lives. We didn't come back to life until like 5pm the next day, before that we were agonizing.

Also I was surprised about how many people were out partying on a Sunday? Even if it was August.

[jasmineakaiumi.livejournal.com]

Soju hangovers are the WORST kind of hangover and soju drunk is my worst kind of drunk ugh it's why I stopped drinking it after my first year in Korea

[imienazwisko.livejournal.com]

I live in Poland and it's pretty bad here as well? To the point if you don't drink alcohol you have to endlessly defend your reasons and people still are offended you're not taking their offer to drink. I mean I still attend social gatherings but it's hard being the only one sober at the end? Drunk people are scary. I don't think I ever saw a party without alcohol here, people need to have fun and it's scary. I been told it would help me to loosen up etc but it's just bs. At my uni people would come not really sober to lectures and no one would blink an eye? Not to mention in movie industry everyone starts they day by drinking in secret (make up bus had a one big drawer with vodka etc) and sometimes in the evening they were barely standing.
In my hometown I lived near big campus and there were these huge students' houses. There's one day in year when students' are given a key to the city and do a parade. It's pretty bad... people don't pass out in public but they do other things :/

[tungatunga.livejournal.com]

But in Poland it's more like letting loose on special occasion as of lately? That's my observation at least, people unless they have drinking problem don't binge drink that often, and rarely during weekdays, not that Polish people become teetotalers but most of this tales about drinking in Poland came from visibility of drunken mostly homeless guys in public.

[imahurricane.livejournal.com]

came here to say that i love your icon, op! i tried to read everything but some i didn't quite get yet.

i don't have any interesting anecdotes involving drinking in korea but i just wanna say that when i first tried soju, i thought it wouldn't be as strong so i poured a little too much and got dizzy afterwards.

[nana-the-dwarf.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I don't even remember where I got it from. ^^'

I've never tried soju before. If it tastes anything similar to sake then I can't say I'll like it a lot. Vodka and good old tequila for me.

[jasmineakaiumi.livejournal.com]

The drinking culture in Korea really irritates me in that I have come to fear taking the bus home after 6pm (yes, that early) because I'm worried that in the packed subway/bus someone is going to puke on me lol
Having to step over to 2 ~ 5+ fresh piles of vomit in my 15 min walk (I live in a student area) is another HUGE turn-off for me.

I've been on the subway so many times and even witnessed a guy flat out on the ground, the subway doors slamming shut on his head, as he puked all over himself, the subway, and the platform. The subway driver just dragged him out by his feet and left him on the platform passed out. Have had people puke on buses I've taken MULTIPLE times, etc. could go on for years.

I'm down with drinking and enjoy it myself a few times a month but I don't understand the mentality of having to drink until you're sick everywhere and become a burden for others lol I asked my Korean ex why he got to puking point every time he drank and he said "because it makes the atmosphere better" ????? idk I guess I'll never understand.

[iamtheliquorr.livejournal.com]

ho'shit

personally, idg people consistently drinking to the point of puking and getting hangovers the next day. I admit I like to drink, but I can't stand getting sick from it and go out of my way to avoid reaching that point. I hate it so much, ugh

[smilla-sini.livejournal.com]

I don't get drunk easily, so, unfortunately, most of my alcohol-related stories from Korea are about taking care of everyone else and making sure they don't break stuff/don't piss off taxi drivers, lol. Also, I remember one pleasant Friday night when we were trying to help a bunch of drunk female office workers find their umbrellas in the water in the Banpo bridge area in complete darkness. We never found it and, thankfully, nobody fell into the water, but it was bizzarre. I still don't understand what they were doing with the umbrellas so that they ended up in the river.
One of my friends tells me about quitting drinking almost every week, but then 회식 happens and it all starts again, because you don't say no to your professor... Unfortunately.

[phililen3.livejournal.com]

I think Korean drinking culture is very uplifting

That's an alcoholic talking. When you can't see other ways of bonding with people and relieving stress, especially healthy ones, that you actually do engage in in the day to day already, and alcohol is all you see, you really need help.

My country is the same. People turn to alcohol for everything. Point out that they are alcoholics and they'll say "but you need alcohol to have fun". No you don't. Non-alcoholics and non-drinkers out there are proof of that. I love how people host weddings: If you want alcohol, you buy it yourself. The wedding party will not provide it for you.


But it's a cycle that's passed down. People will go out of their way to exclude and shame you if you refuse to drink. They say alcohol is a bonding agent when in fact they are the ones going out of their way to exclude people. Drinking is also seen as a coming of age ritual, whether people start drinking at legal age or not. But the fact that people make a big fuss over it adds to the idea that alcohol needs to be an important part of life.

Of course companies are not going to take responsibility for their product and educate people on it. Why should they? Their bottom line is making as much money as possible. Celebrities are there to make money too, for themselves and their companies. That's what is important to them, not social responsibility for what they are promoting. This means that govt is the only one that can do something since social responsibility is part of what they do. In my country, government made it so that cigarettes aren't advertised in public. The associated companies can't sponsor under their brands either. Government lets alcohol get advertised though, even though the negative effects of that are seen all the time. But I guess at least they make advertisers mention the legal drinking age and some of the effects of drinking (though it isn't enough imo). If only government would step up.

[typhlogirl.livejournal.com]

The drinking culture in SK is...intense. I don't know how I'd deal with constantly having to drink to socialize with colleagues. I mean, here in Australia we've also got big alcohol related problems, but ours mostly revolve around violence and drunk idiots punching each other because toxic masculinity, etc.

As for a personal anecdote about my experience with alcohol in SK, I do have one; I stayed in a fantastic hostel in Hongdae when I visited Seoul a few years ago (it was called KpopStay, if you're heading there any time soon), and the night I was due to leave the owner of the hostel (a young guy in his late 20s/early 30s) and two of his female staff members took me out for a BBQ. It was a fantastic gesture on their part, particularly since a) I was travelling alone and b) I love Korean BBQ but was a bit too embarrassed to try doing it on my own due to the language barrier/being a foreigner and worrying about looking silly.

Anyway, back to the point of the story; soju was brought to our table and I honestly....really don't like it that much and I'm a bit of a lightweight when spirits are involved, but to be polite I said I'd have a few shots/glasses, except (as is the culture) they kept filling my glass once I'd finished, to similarly be polite.

WELL, holy shit, we must have made quite the sight heading back to the hostel because they were all walking normally and were perfectly fine (despite polishing off like....three times what I drank) while my foreign ass was staggering along the (really busy, this was the middle of Hongdae) street, swaying back and forth, babbling to them about god only knows what and looking drunk as fuck (because I was drunk as fuck). Not my classiest moment.

They were very amused, to say in the least.....

[juhli.livejournal.com]

One Thursday evening, it was around 9 pm, my roommate and i suddenly heard how someone tried to type the code to open our dorm room door.
We opened the door and this intoxicated girl was standing there, clearly thinking this was her room. After she threw up a bit in front of our door, she took off her shoes, went to our minifridge and drank our apple juice. Then, she took out a make-up container from my roommates desk and put her contact lenses in xD

[fabulousdoll.livejournal.com]

LMAO this is too funny! but did she go back to her room later or she stayed for the night?

[burnbook31.livejournal.com]

I havent tried soju, how many shot should i take to be only ~tipsy~ and not drunk as fuck?

[nefertitii.livejournal.com]

depends on how much you can drink. half a bottle to 1 bottle maybe. you have to be eating alongside it.
i got drunk after 1 bottle before and only tipsy after 2 before so... who knows.

[ironicmustache.livejournal.com]

i do not miss having to hop over piles of vomit every monday on my short walk to work.

seeing people PASSED OUT drunk on the sidewalks was always really distressing to me, especially when it was young women and their friends either ditched them or were pulling them along, laughing, like nothing was wrong.

i don't drink at all, so work drinking culture was something that i had a hard time with there.

[broadway-bound3.livejournal.com]

I'm so thankful that the school I worked at had understanding co-workers. The Koreans never pressured me into drinking when we went out. If I got drunk (which was few and far between) it was my own fault. There was one big dinner that the school had and even people from HR came out for it and they kept giving toasts which meant I had to drink. One to start everyone off, one for just the people at the table I was sitting at, one for a speech some HR guy gave, and then my director was coming around to each table for a toast. I had to get up early the next day for an appointment and didn't feel like doing that last shot of soju with the director so I filled my shot glass with water (thank god soju is clear). My director didn't even notice but everyone at my table knew. They didn't say anything and when I downed it I made that face and noise that is ubiquitous with drinking soju and my director seemed so proud of me. After she left for the next table my coworkers were in awe at my acting skills.

TL;DR when you don't want to drink the soju, fill the glass with water and fake it.

[ababobaby.livejournal.com]

LMAOOOO

[classicfire.livejournal.com]

It's always upsetting to see one character in a drama with tons of empty soju bottles or beer cans infront of them after getting a bit upset over something. This normalization of drinking that much is terrible. I was just thinking the other day about this and how many people over there must suffer from liver problems.

[nefertitii.livejournal.com]

ive been staying near hongdae for a while and surprisingly enough i havent seen a lot of vomit puddles in the mornings.

my friend once asked me what my drinking habits were and when i reciprocated the question he told me.. "I run back home" ?? i was confused but basically after work when they go out drinking with their seniors/colleagues he's always forced to drink and he hates it. they keep drinking till 2/3 am and then have to work again the next morning so he prefers to run away earlier in the night to go sleep lol

[leorizanzel.livejournal.com]

I don't drink so I don't have any crazy stories of me getting wasted (and I've heard horror stories about soju, none of which I was willing to test out for myself). But I have two funny stories of drunk college kids:

1. When I was wandering around in Uijeongbu's main corridor, I stumbled upon a street performance and a fairly big crowd. From out of nowhere, some dude in a Rilakkuma costume stumbled into the center of this crowd and in front of the performers, obviously smashed. A group of college-aged kids ran up to the crowd, yelled at the guy, and pulled Rilakkuma out of the crowd and into an alleyway.

2. I went to a club in Hongdae with a friend that grew up in Seoul and I decided it was a good idea to try and use the bathroom. While waiting in line, some dude starts trying to chat me up in English (I have red hair and blue eyes, so it was a pretty good guess that I wasn't from around there). The girl in front of me, with a bleached platinum bob and a killer denim jacket, literally pulled me away from the super awkward situation and put me in front of her in line. Until I left the line, she kept her arm around mine and guided me to the bathroom so I wouldn't have to deal with this pushy drunk dude. She was so sweet and so obviously drunk; I'll never forget her.

[juhli.livejournal.com]

i love storys where girls look out for each other!

[seulgibear.livejournal.com]

as someone who can't stand the taste of alcohol and never drinks, i've never been able to understand why people do so until they pass out. sure i can understand why being buzzed would be fun, but being blackout drunk that you're not in charge of yourself anymore... why
being pressured to socialize over drinks sounds like my kind of hell tbh

[spazzndance.livejournal.com]

Whenever the topic of drinking culture in Korea comes up, it'll remind me of my semester exchange in Busan and how it was perfectly normal to see college students get drunk on weekdays. During the university festival, my friends and I (we were the only exchange students there) were invited to sit with some professors and our division head and I remember being so confused and amazed that they offered to buy us drinks because that would never happen where I'm from. I don't drink but my friends do and we had to come up with an excuse to leave the table after a while because the professors kept refilling their shot glass with soju.

At the end of the night I saw the division head so wasted he had to be dragged to his ride because he couldn't even walk on his own. It was crazy.

[smilla-sini.livejournal.com]

What cracks me up the most about this situation is that for them there's nothing unusual in getting wasted in front of their students, but for you it's so awkward next time when you go to the lecture or something. Like, "you're our professor, a nationally renowned researcher, but two days ago we saw you literally crawling on your knees". :DD Yeah, awkward.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_redneckbitchx/]

If I had to say what was the biggest culture shock when I went to Korea, I would say this would be it.

[ohcrepe.livejournal.com]

Based on the amount of denial in this article, the whole country needs an intervention. Seems like only the police force is aware of how crippling this problem is. I remember Park Ki-woong in a show, he was livid at a drunk man who was denying hospital treatment for his friend. It was infuriating to watch.

[imienazwisko.livejournal.com]

youre talking about that Beating Hearts variety show? it was great, heartbreaking to watch but so worth it

[kyokomurasaki.livejournal.com]

I'm going to SK later on this year and ngl, I do want to set aside a night to go out and get at least semi-shitfaced but I definitely don't want to reach the point of passing out/puking in the street and being totally out of commission the next day. I'll just have to be smart about pacing myself lol.

Also I have no idea how people just drink straight soju; it's like vodka shots but even worse.

[juhli.livejournal.com]

Soju goes really well with food and there is also fruit-flavored soju, which tastes nice.

[darkensunrise.livejournal.com]

I'm going to Korea in the summer and I don't drink. I might have one every once in a while - like once or twice A YEAR, but the drinking culture and the pressure to drink scares me a bit. People still look at me weird when I tell them I don't drink

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

You don't have to drink, a lot of people are understanding. Don't be scared, just tell them you don't drink and be firm about it, they'll leave you alone.

[921227.livejournal.com]

Idgi like, you can have a healthy drinking culture, there's really no reason to drink in excess that you pass out and vomit in public, esp if you're just out with friends/coworkers and not clubbing etc. the women that left their passed out friend are horrifying. I could never image leaving a friend, esp a female friend, out I pby themselves, esp in an environment where everyone's shitfaced and I'd be pissed as hell if my 'friends' ever did that to me. It's not safe at all. SK needs to get on that mixed drink business because bottles and bottles of hard liquor a week sounds terrible tbh

I've personally only passed out drinking once, and that was when I first started drinking in my teens, now I can drink a lot and still be pretty okay because I know my limits and how to pace myself.

[angela-derp-otp.livejournal.com]

if you go to Korea chances are you will go back home with at least 5 drunk stories to tell.

One time I went clubbing with a couple of friends (all of us were foreigners except for two), and one of my korean friends got so shitfaced we could not find her until next morning, the worst part is that she had the key to our locker (in Korea most clubs have lockers where you can leave your stuff), and in her drunken state she had taken out all of our stuff. So me and my friends were left without money, phones, etc. I was so scared for her and pissed off omg.

Long story short, we ended up sitting in a park for hours, and at some point we asked some stranger for a phone and we called her (it was like 9 AM already), she didn't even know where she was, that she had met some guy at the club and took her to a noraebang and then to some other club and now she was in what she assumed was his apartment.

And as incredible as my story sounds, it is such a common situation, like my friend is not promiscuous, but girls and guys get so drunk they don't even know wtf they do.

People assume "drinking culture" in korea is safe, but in reality people has just normalized a lot of sketchy/unsafe stuff. Like guys picking up drunk girls in clubs is not seeing as something wrong, when in reality a lot of guys go there preying on girls. Its crazy.

[jasmineakaiumi.livejournal.com]

Ugh the "vulture" type are the worst here like the ones that hang around past 2am floating around areas with lots of drunk people looking to pick up girls who are too drunk to say no??? Pisses me off so much

[unicornios.livejournal.com]

"Jiyeon Shin, a university student, says she usually goes out drinking five times a week with friends."

Girl, B Y E. Do yoga or something instead of drinking alcohol if you're stressed omgggg


I don't drink but I used to go to parties to see my friends get smashed. Drunk people do so much stupid shit lmao it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, gets their life in danger or is being destructive with a continous behavior aka drinking too much.
Unfortunately, my partying crew got broken up so now I'm super chill lmao

[mycorrhizoid.livejournal.com]

It's fascinating to me, but also very unsettling.

I don't think trying to tax alcohol more or better educate people on the risks is really going to help much. Any addiction can be damaging, and if you make it harder to drink they'll start doing something else.

The root cause is stress. Korea's education system, the workplace culture - it puts enormous stress on people, and they drink to forget about it for a little while. I suppose it doesn't help matter that drinking is such an ingrained part of social interactions though.

TLDR: Drinking to excess is a symptom of a larger issue.

[schizofragile.livejournal.com]

lmao thanks for the loogies + vomit in the streets tip. If I ever decide to visit Korea I know what to look out for. Also, who the hell cleans the damn streets free of that disgusting muck every day???

Drinking alcohol is only fun if you don't crash afterwards with a nasty af hangover + no sense in the world anymore tbh. Getting tipsy + slightly drunk is ok though, provided there's someone sober enough to get everyone's shit together.

[jasmineakaiumi.livejournal.com]

No one really does unless they puke in front of a store..if that's the case someone who works there will hose it down in the morning but a lot of darkened/black stains on the sidewalks are old fossilized vomit stains lmao it's why you never want to drop anything on the ground here