A survey last summer by one of the major newspapers, I think it was, apparently found soju to be the main source of caloric intake for working men, (followed by sam gyeop sal and rice, in that order; for women, number one was instant coffee). I don’t know how reliable the survey was, but…

Finally, an unmissable link would be the correlation between drinking and higher education here. College students form very strong bonds as freshmen — social networks that outlast most other networks formed in University, according to some paper I read a while back. And guess which year of university is, as one Korean professor I know put it, “a drinking contest”? (There are reasons for it, of course; the fact that senior year of high school for any college-bound student is a single long gauntlet of study culminating in a college entrance exam means that freshmen year is almost guaranteed to be a time to goof off. But nonetheless, the fact is that freshmen year is when drinking habits — usually excessive ones — are not just picked up but enforced, with elder students getting the freshies druunk out of their gourds by insisting they have more and consume it quickly.)

I should note I’m not criticising. I’m just noting the fact. I’m actually kind of studying Korean drinking culture in relation to the Gin Craze in England, and there are a lot of parallels. If I were subject to the kinds of stresses and social pressures that many Korean guys are, I’d probably be right there with them with a bottle of soju in hand.

Oh, and on the smoking: it’s widely thought that smoking habits are picked up during mandatory military service, if not before, because cigarettes are *dirt* cheap (and about the only form of consumption possible on the wages that conscripts get) and because, well, everyone else is smoking, so it becomes part of the culture of masculinity. (Links between military service and other elements of masculinity as coonceptualized in Korea these days are also noticeable, too.)