"Drink a Little Drink"

Another good article from the Joongang Daily.

Bottoms Up?
Corporate Korea distorts historic drinking culture

"To show commitment to one’s company, old traditions evolved into a peculiar drinking culture here involving boilermakers and group binge drinking."

 

Click the box below for the article 

This one is about the drinking culture in Korea, which having experienced, can be pretty absurd. You are expected to drink when offered and not deny it. If you do, you are seen as weak and it can hurt your relationships.

Personally, I've refused drinks with teachers many times as I do not enjoy getting completely drunk that I cannot stand on my own. They've come to accept this fact, but give me looks of disapproval and make comments in Korean that I don't understand, but can understand they're disappointed in me. Tough.

Yet, this doesn't effect my job in anyway unlike it could for Koreans. My girlfriend's position as an event planner entails higher risks as she is expected to drink with her co-workers as well as clients for social and business reasons. She doesn't enjoy drinking that much either and has said that she can't refuse her bosses - until one time after a business meeting I almost brought her to the hospital for alcohol poisoning because she was extremely drunk and having a hard time breathing. After I expressed my disapproval and anger at her bosses for "forcing" her to binge drink, she talked with her human resources manager and they became aware of her concerns.

According to a previous Joongang report,  Workers sick of drinking sessions after office hours, "Three out of 10 Korean workers are dependent on alcohol" and "according to a recent survey by Incruit";

"27 percent of respondents said they are dependent on alcohol, including 32 percent of men and 22 percent of women. It reflected the fact that 46 percent of respondents said they go out to drink up to three nights a week, with 77 saying they become drunk 10 percent to 20 percent of the time...Nearly 4 percent of respondents admitted to suffering from alcohol-related illnesses or having to take medication, with 7.1 percent of men and 0.6 percent of women saying this was the case."

Alcoholism and Alcohol related incidents have become some major issues for Korean society. Drinking and driving is a major issue, although almost anyone can easily take taxi's or hire proxy drivers. There have been issues of drunk men abusing women on the subways, abducting children from their homes and even schools. (As you can read here, here and here.) Of course, unfortunately these things happens everywhere in the world.

As a side note: the other night our staff went out for a school function and I witnessed a drunk woman so drunk she fell and slammed her head into the corner of a concrete wall causing her to bleed. (while her drunk colleagues laughed and threw her half-unconscious into a taxi). I was reminded about the "Blackout Korea" blog -  where you can see some interesting photos: sometimes of passed out Koreans in public....

 

...and other times of foreigners making fun of them (in a pretty immature fashion).