The country, in soju

I. The pouring protocol

You do not pour your own soju. This is the first rule and the most enforced. You pour for the people around you. They pour for you. The exchange of pouring is the exchange of attention — to pour for someone is to see them, to acknowledge that they are here and that you want the evening to continue with them in it.

The soju glass is small — a shot-glass volume, approximately 40 to 50 millilitres. It is filled to within a few millimetres of the rim. The pour should be complete. A half-filled soju glass is not a restraint, it is an omission.

When you are poured for, you drink. Not necessarily all at once — the geonbae (cheers/bottoms up) is one way to drink it but not the only way — but you drink relatively quickly, because someone is watching your glass and will refill it before it is empty if they are doing their job correctly.

II. The food

Soju is not consumed alone. This is the second rule. The food and the drink are designed for each other in a specific way that is not metaphorical. The Korean table — the combination of banchan, grilled meat, rice, and kimchi — provides a constant base of flavours that the soju's clean alcohol amplifies and clarifies.

Anju is the Korean concept of food specifically eaten with alcohol. At a pojangmacha — the street tent that is the most democratic social institution in Seoul — the anju might be tteokbokki, pajeon, or sundae. Foods flavourful enough to stand up to alcohol and rich enough to slow the pace of consumption. At a KBBQ restaurant, the anju is the grilled meat itself.

III. The walk home

Koreans walk home from dinner. Or they take the late subway, which runs until 1am on weekdays, slightly later on weekends, long enough that the dinner and the soju and the second round of soju at a different place and the stop for ramyeon at a convenience store can all be contained within the transit schedule.

What I am describing is not the soju. The soju is the vehicle. What I am describing is an evening — the specific shape of an evening that Korean social life takes when it goes well, when the table was the right size and the food was right and the soju kept appearing and nobody was in a hurry. The drink made the evening possible. The evening was the point.

IV. What has changed

The soju market has changed in the last decade. The craft spirits movement has produced Korean artisanal soju — distilled from single-origin grain or sweet potato, at higher alcohol percentages and with the complex flavour of a real distillate rather than diluted industrial ethanol.

This soju is more expensive, more interesting, and less appropriate for the evening I have been describing. The green-bottle soju — 16 percent, sweet, cold — is what the evening is for. The artisanal soju is what you drink when you are tasting, not when you are being poured for across a table.

Recipe — Pajeon · Scallion Pancake

Hae-jin Choi · Seoul · serves 4 · 15 minutes · the anju with soju

• Serves 4
• 15 min total
• 8 scallions
• 1½ c flour

The Ingredients

• 8 large scallions, roots trimmed, left whole
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cup rice flour
• 1 egg
• 1 cup ice water
• ½ tsp fine salt
• Neutral oil, generously, for the pan
• Dipping sauce: 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp rice vinegar, sesame oil and gochugaru to taste

The method

1. Mix flour, rice flour, egg, ice water and salt into a thin batter. Lumps are fine. Do not overwork.
2. Heat oil generously in a large pan over medium-high heat. The oil must be hot.
3. Pour batter into the pan in a circle. Lay scallions across the wet batter, parallel.
4. Cook 3 to 4 minutes without moving, until the bottom is golden and the edges are crisp.
5. Flip in one motion. Cook 2 more minutes.
6. Slide onto a board, cut into wedges with scissors. Serve with the dipping sauce and cold soju.

About the contributor

Hae-jin Choi

Hae-jin Choi writes about soju culture and the Korean table from Seoul, South Korea. The soju is on the table before anyone sits down — because that is what you do in Korea when you are the first to arrive at a dinner table.

Editor’s notes — the longer view

A note on the two hands. When an elder pours for you, you hold the glass with two hands — one cupping the base, the other steadying the side. When you pour for an elder, you do the same with the bottle. This is not optional. It is the most basic gesture of respect at a Korean table and the easiest one to get right.

A note on the second round. The Korean dinner is rarely one location. Cha 1, cha 2, cha 3 — round one, round two, round three — describes a night that moves from a barbecue restaurant to a pojangmacha to a noraebang. Each round has its own drink, its own register, its own pace.

A note on the convenience store. The 24-hour convenience store at the end of the night sells ramyeon, kimbap, and small cups of black coffee. It is the last stop before the subway. The ramyeon is eaten standing at a small counter or sitting on plastic stools outside. This is not a failure of the evening — it is the recovery phase, planned for, almost ritualised.

A note on drinking alone. Honjasul — drinking alone — has become more common in Korea in the last decade. The convenience-store soju with a microwave dinner is a real cultural form now. It is not the form I have been describing. The pouring protocol assumes a table. Alone, you can pour for yourself. The rules do not apply because the room does not exist.

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