For me the culture of drinking in Korea is a mixed bag. On the surface I can appreciate the importance of drinking alcohol in an regimented way to bring a group closer together.
Of course this has many downsides as well. People are forced to drink when they don’t want to. People get sick all over the place. The rates of alcoholism, much of which probably goes unnoticed because the society lionizes drinking prowess, must be staggering.
That said, I’ve never heard of Koreans killing one another over it.
Police arrested two construction workers on suspicion of beating their coworker to death for refusing to drink.
Gwanak Police in southern Seoul said Tuesday that the two offenders, identified only as Lee (42) and Chung (52), beat their colleague Chang (47) to death at another coworker’s house in Shillim-dong, Seoul, Saturday.
The two beat the man because Chang refused to go out drinking with them, police officials said. They said their crime was unintentional.
For more on Korean drinking culture check out this Wikipedia post about soju.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Gus Lonzo // Jan 24, 2008 at 7:09 pm
What a disgrace. Imagine hurting someone, let alone beating them to death, simply because they refused to drink with you. What lunacy. What adolescent stupidity. And often that is really all that’s going on in these cases, whether they occur in Korea, or in some other
so-called “drinking culture”, such as those of Japan and Germany. Nothing more than idiotic adolescent conduct. Just your typical group think behaviour dressed up in the garbs of “tradition” and “culture”. Speaking of which, I recall reading that once upon a time in Germany there used to be some sort of “blood tithe” or other to deal with these sorts of mishaps. Cheers.
2 Jackson // Jan 24, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Well, let’s look at the bright side of this. I’ve never been to Korea so I can’t say anything about it, but having lived in Japan and Taiwan, I will say that the flip side to this is that the social space created by drinking culture in Japan allows a window of freedom to express feelings, emotions, and opinions that normally get stifled. I think it plays a crucial social role in a society where you have to be very careful to avoid social missteps in public.
Taiwan on the other hand doesn’t have as much of a pronounced culture of drinking in public and I think it contributes to the high levels of stress there.
These are obviously absolute statements but all in all I think out of fairness, the tolerance for alcohol or almost requisite drinking at least gives people some time to be themselves when they couldn’t otherwise.
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