Let me set the scene: September 2025, Sunday, lunch. I’m with my husband Chad and my sister, gorging to the point of unnecessary discomfort in a nearby, slightly dingy (translate: bona fide authentic) Korean restaurant. As always, we order way too much for our 40-something year old bodies to handle.
Chad: You know what, I miss Korea. I wanna plan a trip there soon. You want?
Me: Sure! I mean, we haven’t really planned anything for the holidays yet.
I shoot a look at my sister, hoping she forgets to “remind” Chad that we literally just did that last Christmas.
She takes the hint and miraculously holds her tongue (a huge feat for her, I’m sure).
The thing is, we’ve made so many December trips to South Korea and oddly… Chad and I haven’t gotten tired of it.
It’s for myriad of different reasons: The weather (-17C might sound like much but for people who have hot, hell, and flooded in as seasonal options, snowy sub-zero winters are a beautiful novelty). The shopping. The endless sights. The people who would go out of their way (armed with Google Translate) to help you. The cutest ahjummas and ahjussis (you haven’t really experienced South Korea until you’ve had one of their grandmas or grandpas fuss over you). The technology. The transportation.
For us it’s primarily the endless, delicious food options.
Deliciousness is everywhere in South Korea: An ahjumma’s mom and pop jokbal place where she’d teach you how to order water (mool chuseo!). An immo’s Korean BBQ place (no, they don’t do unlimited samgyup like we do here but it can be so cheap) where she gets concerned after seeing you not dressed warmly enough (true story). A random chimaek (chicken and beer) place where they’ll ply you with radish if you turn red with their notorious spice levels (again, true story). Jjajangmyeon from a food court. Some random college eatery serving nothing but gimbap. A food stall along the street serving tteokbokki.
Of course, it can’t be true-blue Korean deliciousness without their signature drink in the iconic green bottles: Soju.
One doesn’t need to be a drinker to be familiar with soju… It’s found in convenience stores, groceries, as a plot point in a kdrama (where the hero uses a few bottles as liquid courage to either confess to his girl or drown his sorrows after failing at life), and even through some of our favorite kpop idols (Kim Taehyung of BTS opens soju in such a specific way that his method has been named after him).
I am, however, a massive drink nerd… So while it’s easy enough to associate soju with the hallyu wave, I actually have learned so much about soju over the years.
Sool
As a geek, Chad and I decided to take a 3 hour class on sool, or Korean alcoholic drinks, last Christmas. It obviously included soju, but the traditional drink makgeolli was also discussed. We learned that makgeolli can be unstable for transport, which is largely why the good, artisanal stuff tends not to be transported out of Korea. There are English classes in The Sool Gallery in Seoul.
Etiquette
I will need to write an entire article about this, but the etiquette involves a lot of emphasis in respecting seniority in age or rank. You have to receive your shot with two hands. You have to face away from the more senior person in the table as you take your shot. Do not serve yourself. When toasting, your glass should be lower than the senior’s. They’re kinder to us foreigners, but they consider fellow Koreans who miss out on these rules as more than a little rude.
Anju Part 1: What It Is
Koreans rarely, rarely drink without at least a snack… something akin to pulutan in our culture, which they call anju. Anju (I welcome Koreans correcting me in my translations, by the way) roughly translates to “alcohol blocker”… which makes sense because most people get wasted by drinking on an empty stomach.
Anju Part 2: Soju Pairing
Generally speaking, soju is one of the few drinks that can hold its flavors with savory, umami-rich* Korean food. It can be paired with stews (such as the dak-bokkeum-tang we’ve had in our friends’ parents’ restaurant in Paju), samgyeopsal, jokbal (I have an obsession with jokbal, BTW), grilled seafood, or even gim bugak (seaweed fried with glutinous rice).
Anju Part 3: Chemesthesis
Yes, I’m nerdy enough to throw a clinical sounding word in here… Basically, chemesthesis is that mouth burn one feels when consuming spicy food with drinks that have high abv. I learned about the subjectivity for the tolerance of mouth burn the hard way. I once paired kimchi stew with soju, thinking that it would be awesome in the -13C weather (besides, everybody was having the same in the resto). Every Korean drinker I’ve spoken to about this looked at me incredulously, saying that it’s such a beautiful pairing. The German in me went, NEIN!
Soju Myth: Sweeter? More Bitter?
I honestly thought that the notion of soju tasting sweeter when you’ve had a good day, and more bitter if you’re going through a bad phase was just… me having watched too many kdramas. During our last Christmas trip, however, I found that to be true… I was happily enjoying what I thought to be a sweeter soju when in fact, I was just having the time of my life over grilled beef in Seoul with my husband.
It’s not me, it’s the soju
I started drinking soju when Chad worked for a Korean tech giant around March 2015. I initially got into it (and kdramas as well as Korean food) to have something to talk about with the wives, but I actually fell in love with the stuff. I remember never being able to finish an entire bottle back in 2015, finding it too strong and abrasive… My Southeast Asian side even gravitated towards the flavored varieties (which I now primarily use for cocktails, never for drinking neat). These days, I can kill a couple of bottles in one sitting… which I found unusal.
So, what happened?
I discovered that soju has been further watered down over the years. Soju used to be around 30-40% abv during the Japanese occupation, which got diluted to around 25% in the 1970s due to access to ingredients. When I started drinking soju in 2015, it was around 18.5% (and there were 20%+ available in the market). Nowadays, the 16.5% abv dominates the market, but some manufacturers still make the 20% abv. It’s not unusual for Korean grandfathers (halabeoji) to get sentimental about the old days when soju was stronger, though.
Manufacturing
There are generally two kinds of soju: Traditional Distilled Soju (Jeungryusik Soju found in specialty stores) and Modern Diluted Soju (Hiseoksik Soju, the popular soju readily available everywhere). The former utilizes a more tedious method, involving nuruk (fermentation starter made from ground wheat, rice, and/or barley), mash, traditional fermentation vessels (onggi), distillation using a soju gori, aging and bottling.
Modern Diluted Soju involves large producers typically purchasing highly distilled neutral alcohol (about 95% abv) from the Korea Ethanol Supplies Company. These large producers would dilute this concentrated alcohol with purified water, lowering the alcohol content to about 16% abv. It would be filtered through charcoal filtration**, and some variants would have flavors added to them (I’m partial to the peach flavored ones, which I mix with sugar-free Yakult).
Regions and Brands
We take the regional origins of soju for granted because, well, we take what’s readily available here. However, there are specific brands associated with certain regions in South Korea (Jinro from Seoul/Gyeonggi-do, Good Day from Gyeongsangnam-do, Daesun from Busan, etc). Brands would have nuances that make them different from each other (Chamisul is lighter and less sweet, Chum-Churum starts off harsh but mellows out, Ilpoom Jinro has a higher abv without being harsh, etc).
Botttles and Shots
Despite the fact that most soju are bottled in green bottles, it wasn’t the always the case. In the 1980s, they came in blue, brown, or transparent. The Korean government started to standardize the bottles: Brown for home consumption, and blue for business (with higher taxes). This didn’t work (companies found ways around it by secretly buying brown bottled soju), and all soju bottles became blue – reducing manufacturing and recycling costs. In 1993, Dusan Gyeongwol launched Green Soju, which was the first soju to be sold in a light green bottle to make it seem more “natural,” clean, and easy to drink. It knocked Jinro out of the top soju spot, which prompted Jinro to launch their own green bottles… and the rest is history. These bottles make up 30% of soju production costs, which is why most companies decided to adapt to the green bottles (reducing recycling costs). Most bottles found on the market are green, with the exception of Jinro Is Back (in the nostalgic blue bottles), Hallasan and Saero (in clear bottles).
Trivia: each 360ml bottle of soju should yield 6 shots.
Koreans vs Hangovers
So, a former Korean student of ours swears by his Korean liver of steel (Hi, Jean!). I learned a few tricks from Koreans over the years on avoiding and curing hangovers:
I learned about hangover drinks from Di, arguably one of my favorite Korean friends. I admit to loading up on Easy Tomorrow, a packet of pills that are meant to be taken before boozing up (or in the event of a hangover), from Korean drug stores. Condition Stick are jelly sticks that are more available in Manila, meant to be consumed the same way as the former.
I personally am a huge fan of ramyun, a coke zero, and an ion drink after having too much the night before… but Koreans have these things called haejang guk (hangover soup). I can’t find a universal recipe for it, but it involves beef bone broth, beef, and bean sprouts.
In the spirit of fun, I’m ending this with a drinking song I learned from Ms. Chay Lee (who was the inspiration behind this article). Another Korean friend told me that it’s a rather commanding way of telling someone to finish their drink, but is also a fun chant that gets sung as alcohol gets brought to the table.
*Umami tends to bring out the bitterness in most drinks, such as wine, whisky, and even sake
**It’s a filtration method also used for most clear spirits, such as vodka and some gin
For Di and Jay, our favorite Korean couple
For Ms. Chay, who never gets tired of teaching me Korean words and food while doing amazing work on my hair
