by Chris Tharp
On the day he stole my bike, he parked it across the street, hiding it in a giant parking lot between two cars. He then came straight back into the school and made his next, afternoon class, erasing any suspicions among others that he was the thief. What the kid forgot to consider was that all three gates that lead into Suyeong College are monitored by CCTV. Any vehicle coming or going gets captured–including motorcycles, both legitimate and stolen. Tae-hyun had planned on finishing his school day and taking off with the bike later that night. It was obvious he was stashing it and trying to cover his tracks. The only reason he confessed was because he had been caught red-handed. I knew that, Cowboy knew that, and Professor Kim knew that, but in Korea, the truth often gives way to saving face.
CHAPTER 13: KIMCHEE FLOWERS
“Alcohol… it’s a son of a bitch, y’all.”
–The Butthole Surfers, “Alcohol”
Let’s get one thing clear: Korea is a drinking country. If you enjoy tipping the bottle, sipping the sauce, hitting the hooch, and getting straight-up drunk, this is the country for you. Alcohol is served everywhere, at all times. Drinking is not just what’s done, it’s encouraged. It’s viewed as a way to bond with friends and co-workers, as well as a necessary pressure-release valve in this high-stress, work-around-the-clock culture. For a person who loves booze of all stripes, Korea is a kind of paradise. It’s like Disneyland for alcoholics.
One of the most interesting thing about this country is how there is almost no stigma attached to over-drinking. It is, instead, often viewed as a badge of honor–especially among men–where nightly drinking rituals are seen as a test of manhood, a proving of your cojones. Shots are poured and backs are slapped and frosty glasses of beer are filled for all in the group to take down. To sit out a round can be viewed as an insult of sorts, or at least a way to show your true pansy colors. Real Korean men drink. It’s just part of the gig. This goes all the way to the morning. You can show up at work in a wrinkled shirt, bleary-eyed with unkempt hair, and stinking of drink from the night before, and your boss will usually pull you aside and say:
“Yesterday, many drinking?”
You look him in the eye and slowly nod.
“Oh! Very good! Very good!” he gushes, vigorously shaking your clammy hand. In fact, you’re that much more likely to get that big promotion. He knows he can trust you.
None of this is to say that women don’t drink here as well. They do, especially these days, where the previous cultural prohibition against women knocking it back is pretty much a thing of the past. In Korea it is very common to see groups of women in their twenties or thirties sharing pitchers of beer, sipping soju at the ubiquitous barbecue joints, or getting into some cocktails at the club. Younger women feel free to drink, and no scolding or finger-wagging from elders is going to stop this trend, just one of many in the Westernization of a generation of Korean women. Smoking in public is still a different matter, though again we see this taboo broken with increasing frequency.
Drinking in Korea is different than drinking in the most Western countries, where we usually just drink recreationally with friends, or in an attempt to chase down desirable members of the opposite sex. Drinking for fun does, of course, exist in Korea, but consumption of alcohol takes on a whole other role: that of group bonding. Despite being the most visibly outgoing of all East Asians, Koreans can still be quite shy with strangers, so alcohol is used as a lubricant for Koreans who are unfamiliar with each other. At university this takes its form as what’s known as the MT, which stands for membership training. This usually consists of an overnight retreat to a beach or mountain getaway with a meal, followed by some group trust and teambuilding games, all of which culminate in a monster drinking session, where even the shyest and most teetotaling of the group are plied with booze. Every spring I am forced to accompany my students on an MT. We wander from room to room, quaffing countless shots of soju, eating chicken and steamed pigs’ feet, all the while watching while hapless students drink themselves messy.
After graduating from university and joining a company, this bonding-through-getting-smashed ritual takes the form of the hweshik, which is a dinner-and-drinking session with your boss and coworkers. This almost always consists of a meal of grilled meat and soju, followed by a visit to a beer house or hof, as they’re commonly known (borrowed from the Germans via the Japanese–a holdover from the colonial era), climaxing in an hour or two at the norae-bang (karaoke room). These work excursions can be once every few months or several times a week, depending on the company, and while attendance isn’t technically compulsory, to miss out is to put your good graces with your colleagues–not to mention your future with the company–in jeopardy.
I’ve been on many, many a hweshik and generally enjoy them, since I’m rarely one to turn down a good meal or a drink, and–being a performer by nature–am not shy to jump up on the mike and belt out a song… especially when lubed with booze. But others are not so game to eat and drink with everyone from work. Many of my Western friends chafe at being dragged out to a hweshik: some people hate drinking and others implode at the mere thought of singing in front of others. This goes for Koreans as well. Much of the drinking at a hweshik is nearly forced. When you finish your drink, another is immediately poured for you. Toasts are constantly made, and if you don’t drink up with everyone else, you will often be scolded. This usually happens under the watchful of eye of your boss, as well, so more than often the alcohol will go down your gullet whether you like it or not.
This idea that you must drink because you have to, not because you want to, was recently challenged by a young woman working for an online game company. In 2007, unable to endure any more forced drinking sessions, she quit the company and sued. The Seoul High Court ruled in her favor, awarding her $32,000 in damages. Though this has led to some companies adopting rules to mitigate mandatory drinking during the hweshik, it has, in truth, done little to lessen the binge drinking that goes on nightly throughout the whole nation. You just have to walk the streets of Seoul, Daegu, or Busan around 11 p.m. on any given night, and you will see adult men in full suits passed out cold on park benches, in subway stations, and sometimes right on the street itself. Fresh puddles of vomit adorn the sidewalks: mixtures of half-digested rice, pork, and red gochujang. A common nickname for them is kimchee flowers.
* * * *
So alcohol is indeed the Korean drug of choice. It’s pretty much the only thing available and the only thing consumed. It’s the one intoxicant allowed in this pressure cooker society. Other drugs–illicit drugs–which are rife though out much of the globe, are strangely absent in Korea. Though Korea is a peninsula, it is effectively an island, since the DMZ cuts off the only land route available. Contraband must come by air or sea.
However, this doesn’t stop other island nations from procuring their fair share of illegal drugs. One need only look so far as the UK, New Zealand, or even Japan–all places where drugs of many stripes are widely available. But why not Korea? Why is Korea just a nation of boozers? Where are the stoners, the cokeheads, the tweekers, and the junkies?
I have neither read nor heard a lot of theories as to why, but one would have to chalk it up to demand. Koreans, for the most part, don’t do illicit drugs. Few of them that I’ve talked to over the years–and there have been many–know the first thing about them. They know they exist, and that they’re somehow bad, but that’s usually the end of it. They certainly don’t have enough information to compare them to each other: for many Koreans, marijuana and heroin are pretty much the same thing, never mind that one is vastly more harmful than the other. They both are against the law, and that’s that. The prevailing point of view (I hesitate to call it wisdom) seems to be Why would they be made illegal if they weren’t nearly equally bad for you?
In many ways, the Sixties really never arrived on this nation’s rocky shores. That said, I have heard stories of some drug subcultures popping up, though these have been almost exclusively limited to the
more worldly environs of Seoul. Meth made a bit of a splash some years back–it’s a wonder it’s not everywhere, considering the (temporary) boost it would give these work and study-obsessed people. Customs and the police do periodically bust people smuggling both opiates and ecstasy tablets–I’ve seen a few stories in the national news–with the contents lain out on table in front of a legion of cameras; this does indicate a demand. Although marijuana does make it onto these shores, and some is grown domestically in small-time operations in the hills and countryside, it is not and has never been used on anything approaching a large scale. So to say that South Korea is entirely free of illegal drugs would be a lie, though it must have one of the lowest usage rates in the world.
The Korean government also takes ALL illegal drug use very seriously, and vigorously prosecutes anyone caught using or having used drugs (positive piss test = possession). There is a zero-tolerance attitude toward drugs in the country, and this no doubt deters those kids who may be curious to at least try them once or twice. The government especially keeps its eyes on the foreign community–us English teachers in particular–for evidence of illegal drug use. It’s no secret that many of us enjoy marijuana in our home countries–where, in some places, it’s basically legal. Some ESL teachers do manage to smuggle or procure a bit while on the peninsula, and the police do not hesitate to aggressively go after anyone from the expat community found in possession. The authorities have been known to go through the phones of those caught, demanding drug tests from every foreigner listed in the phone book, in an attempt to net as many users as possible. Just knowing someone involved with drugs can get you in trouble with the police here.
This local naiveté about drugs is refreshing sometimes, given the jaded and violent drug culture that ravages communities in many of our home countries. For example, hip-hop music and culture are wildly popular among the youth of Korea, and, at least for a while, marijuana imagery was prevalent throughout the genre. I’ve seen countless pot leaves adorning the hats and shoelaces of young people, almost none of whom, I’m sure, have ever tried the stuff. One time, walking down the halls at Suyeong College, I spotted a student wearing an oversized t-shirt with a massive cannabis leaf printed on the front. I was curious whether he knew what it was, so I stopped him, pointed to his shirt, and asked. He looked down, shook his head, and sheepishly admitted that he had no idea.
* * * *
This country is awash in booze of many varieties, though drinking it may not be as simple as one may think. Koreans are very ritualistic in their drinking practices, with rigid customs and protocol which must be adhered to, lest you commit a faux pas that causes everyone in the group to cringe. While I’m certainly not an expert on Korean culture, I have learned a thing or two about downing sul (alcohol) while I’ve been here, and the following are some of my observations:
Some General Guidelines about Drinking with Koreans in Korea
Never pour your own drink. This is the cardinal rule of Korean drinking etiquette. Pouring your own drink not only makes you look like a greedy bastard, but it deprives your drinking partners of doing you the courtesy of pouring your drink for you, which is the height of respect in this culture.
Always drink with food. With the exception of severe street alcoholics, Koreans pretty much never drink without some sort of side dish to snack on. These sides are called anju and are often mandatory at Korean-style drinking establishments, where the beer and soju may be dirt-cheap, but the anjudishes run between ten and twenty bucks a pop. This mandate to buy food can be disconcerting for Westerners who just want to sit down for a few beers, but for Koreans the practice goes without question. Even a couple of beers consumed on a plastic table outside of a convenience store will be accompanied by a bag of crunchy snacks or some juipo–a dried and compressed fish jerky of sorts. This practice may seem a bit of overkill to Western drinkers, but this is how Koreans do it, and it does help to soak up the alcohol and slow down the pace.
Always share your bottle and drink from a glass, or in the case of rice wine, a drinking bowl. In Western countries we usually drink liquor and wine from one bottle, which is shared by the group. In this respect we are no different from Koreans. When drinking beer, though, we often just drink out of our own bottles, even large ones. Most beer in Korea comes in big bottles and is meant to be poured into smaller glasses; to take a bottle for your own and drink straight from it is seen as the height of savagery. Sam, unaware that he was no longer in Idaho, was guilty of this practice when he first arrived, much to the horror of the local Busanites, who stared at him with mouths agape. Not done.
When pouring drinks, always pour the eldest’s first. When drinking with co-workers, this will almost always be your boss or manager. This is very important, and reflects the respect for and observance of hierarchy in this still-very-Confucian society. Moreover, it’s just really polite. A foreign guest will often be the exception to this rule, however. In this case, the most senior of the group will pour the guest’s drink in an attempt to honor and defer to the foreigner. If you find yourself in this situation, just smile and graciously accept the honor.
When pouring a drink–especially for someone older than you–do one of the following with your non-pouring hand: place it over your heart, touch it to the middle of your pouring arm, or pour the bottle with two hands. Two hands is the rule here. To give or receive something with only one hand is seen as disrespectful. This goes for money as well, a custom that I believed to be universally Asian, until the first time I went to Japan and noticed the confused looks I garnered every time I touched my arm when receiving change at the store.
If you really want to show someone respect and affection, give him your glass and then fill it up. This is a custom that only applies to men drinking with men, and pretty much only when soju is involved. When you are finished with your glass (soju is usually sipped out of shot glasses), flick out whatever trace remains are in the bottom with a snap of your wrist, hand it to the man in question, and respectfully fill his glass. He will invariably reciprocate and probably be intensely impressed that you have learned the custom. Your Korean points will go up massively if you can execute this one well.
Always participate in the toasts. Koreans love nothing more than to clink glasses together with a rousing shout of “Gonbae!” every sixty seconds or so. Make sure to always join in and drink afterwards, even if it grows tedious, which it will.
When opening a new bottle of soju, give the base of the bottle a few good slaps. Whether or not this is a national custom or specific to the South Kyungsang Province area that I call home, I cannot say; I am told that one slaps the bottle in order to get rid of evil spirits, which is important in a nation where shamanistic rituals are regularly performed on the beach and fortune tellers can be found in most every shopping center. This, like the giving up of your glass, will surely impress most everyone who you are drinking with.
Know what “love shots” mean. If someone does a “love shot” with you, which involves intertwining arms and pouring drinks into each others’ mouths, they are most likely very interested in you.
Never drink and drive. While this is a no-brainer in any country, it is especially good to keep in mind in Korea, where drunk driving is just about the only traffic law that is regularly and vigorously enforced. All of the main cities have roving checkpoints working seven days a week, and even one or two beers in your system could see you facing a fine of around US$1000, or worse. Taxis are generally affordable, so don’t hesitate to jump in one instead. Another option is to have a Korean friend call a designated driver. These are licensed drivers who will come to where you are and very soberly drive your car and you home, where they, in turn, will be picked up by their own driver. It costs only 10 or 20 dollars and is well worth it, when compared with the risk of doing it yourself.
* * * *
A whole book could be dedicated to the history of alcoholic beverages in Korea and the variety available today. I will make no attempt to document th
e no-doubt countless ways to booze it up on the peninsula, but rather give a rundown of the most common ones presently out there.
Korean Concoctions Described
Soju Soju is the national drink of Korea and has already been referenced and described ad infinitum in these here pages. It usually comes in little green bottles and tastes like a kind of vodka lite. This clear beverage is drunk with most Korean cuisine and on its own as well, though always with side dishes. Soju was originally made from sweet potatoes, but these days its origin is mysterious… though I’ve been told it is made from diluted industrial alcohol. It’s wicked stuff that can wreak havoc on your system. Even though it’s (usually) only half the strength of proper vodka, it is deceptively potent, and often causes people to lose their phones, their keys, their wallets, their clothing, their better judgment, and many cases, their minds. And be warned: a soju hangover is only slightly better than a case of Ebola.
Baekseju Baekseju is an herbal-based fermented rice wine, which is made from traditional methods and contains ginseng. It is viewed as a kind of health liquor; legend has drinking it will allow you to live to one hundred years old. This is reflected in the name of the drink, which contains the world baek, meaning one hundred. It’s a little sweet and much easier on the system than soju. Though not so popular these days, it is widely available and is sometimes consumed as an alternative to the latter.
Makeoli and Dong Dong Ju Makeoli and dong dong ju are essentially the same drink–a sweet and milky white brew made from rice and water. They are served up in big bowls and ladled into smaller ones. Dong dong ju is said to be less refined, with bits of rice floating throughout the drink, though most Koreans will probably be at a loss to really tell you the difference between the two. I’ve often asked and can never get a straight answer. These rice wines were originally consumed by farmers and are considered the most rustic of Korean alcoholic drinks. They are often sipped on the mountain, complimented by the popular Korean pancake known as pajeon. Makeoli has grown in popularity outside of Korea, especially in Japan, where there is said to be a makeoli craze these days. It is really fun to drink and will get you loopy as hell, though the high sugar content can make your head feel like a toxic waste dump the next day.