Is Your Korean Friend Really a Tank?

Is Your Korean Friend Really a Tank?

BERKOP St. Patrick’s Day edition: Koreans, the “Irish of the Orient.”

by sophirrito

Midterm stress be gone – at least for the time being. St. Patrick’s day is right around the corner and the Irish have given us the perfect excuse to drink our sorrows away. A note of caution though: if you’ve got some Korean friends and plan on celebrating this marvelous occasion with them, I suggest you really stock up on alcohol. Let’s not pretend we have never heard about Koreans’ infamous love and/or ability to drink and let’s really not pretend that you have never added on to it by pulling the “Korean” card on them – that is, calling them out on being “Korean” by saying that “Koreans are tanks” if they (ever) refuse to drink.

I have had this happen to me so many times that in all honesty, I am now immune to the “Korean” card. And that says a lot about how often it happens because let me say right now that a stellar amount of sh*t-giving, colloquially speaking, would have had to happen for any Korean, being the nationalistic people we are, to ignore such a pride challenge. For my liver’s sake at least, I couldn’t help but to wonder how this “Korean = tanks” stereotype even came to be, and also if Koreans really are more alcohol-tolerant than people of other race.

It turns out, the stereotype is no other than the truth. A study by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration shows that just like the reputation, Korean Americans are actually the heaviest and the most frequent binge drinkers among Asian Americans. 51.8% of Korean Americans participating in the study reported to drink at least once a month, topping the list among four other ethnic groups.[i] Also, 24.6% of Korean Americans said that they drink more than five glasses of alcohol in one sitting, which is 2-3 times more than other Asian Americans. [ii]

I thought okay, maybe it’s the Korean male population raising the percentage for all of us. But nope – this wishful thinking at an attempt to redeem at least my own reputation at least as a Korean female was laughably crushed when I read the last part of the study. The study shows that for Koreans, even the gap between genders is the narrowest – meaning basically that Korean women drink just as much as Korean men do. If the drinking rate were to be set at 1 for Korean women, the rate for Korean men were 1.5 while the respective women:men ratio for Chinese Americans was 1:2.85, for Japanese 1:3.4, for Filipinos 1:3.58, and for Indians 1:5.04. [iii]

Fellow skeptics, and/or other people that are dying to prove your Korean friends wrong about being able to “hang:” I admit, that is just one study. But how do we explain the landslide victory of Korea’s Jinro soju as the world’s best-selling liquor? The Millionaire’s Club, a British catalog that ranks brands, liquors, and spirits, announced indeed that Jinro soju was the world’s best-selling liquor in 2011 selling over 61.38 million cases in the year.[iv] The runner-up Smirnoff vodka, only sold 24.70 million cases.[v] Keep in mind that the range for this study was worldwide – and the fact is the people outside Korea probably have never even heard of soju. (And I can vouch for this because as I am typing this up on Microsoft Word right now, I see red lines under each “soju” entry but none under “vodka.”) Was 2011 just either a really festive or a miserable year for the Koreans? Unfortunately, Jinro soju has been the undefeated top of the list for eleven years in a row now, and I’m afraid I’m out of faults to find at this point. Oh and by the way – the third world’s best-selling liquor selling some 23.9 million cases in 2011 was Lotte Liquor soju. [vi]

Now it is true that that doesn’t say anything about the actual alcohol tolerance of Koreans in comparison to people of other race. But let’s be real – not only do we know that tolerance is genetic but we’ve also all heard that the more you drink, the higher your tolerance gets. To me it sounds like even if not all Koreans are tanks right now, evolution will work in favor of them and they will be in not too long. So I’m going to say, if you have a midterm or work or anything that requires you to get off your bed the next day, try not to accompany a Korean for drinking let alone challenge him or her. And I swear I’m not just saying this so I won’t be hazed by my friends that are potentially reading this… Even Phillip Chung, one of the “offenders” on the Asian American pop culture blog “You Offend Me You Offend My Family,” says that one of the ways to tell if someone is Korean is: “When the cocktail waitress comes by and asks them if they want to order the whiskey, vodka, rum, beer, or soju, and they respond “Yes, please.”[vii] I’m telling you, chances are, you’ll be the one to end the night with a trash bag in your face and start the next morning with a fat hangover.

---

[i] "Koreans Heaviest Drinkers Among Asian Americans."The Chosun Ilbo, , sec. National, January 08, 2013. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2013/01/08/2013010800356.html (accessed March 2, 2013).

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Max, Kim. "It's official: Jinro soju is the world's best-selling liquor." CNN Travel, June 12, 2012. http://travel.cnn.com/seoul/drink/soju-most-sold-drink-world-930177 (accessed March 2, 2013).

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Phillip, Chung. "Fourteen Ways To Tell If Someone Is Korean." You Offend Me You Offend My Family(blog), October 16, 2009. http://youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com/fourteen-ways-to-tell-if-someone-is-korean/ (accessed February 27, 2013).