Korean Drinking Etiquette: A Local’s Honest Guide
There's a particular silence that lands on a Korean table when someone pours their own soju. Nobody corrects it. Nobody explains it. Everyone just registers it and carries on, which is the thing about Korean drinking etiquette: it's enforced almost entirely by people being too polite to mention it. You can break three rules in your first ninety seconds and never find out you did. And the rules stack up fast. Which hand holds the glass, which way your head turns, whose glass gets filled first, whether you're allowed to pour at all. So here's the version I wish somebody handed out at the airport. Not the museum-placard explanation about Confucian harmony, but what actually happens at the table, why it happens, and what to do with your hands. The one idea behind all the rules Almost every drinking rule in Korea comes from the same place: age and rank decide how you speak and move. Korean has entire verb endings built around whether the person across from you is older...