Korean Vice I: Alcohol

In this city there are about as many bars as there convenience stores (for a measurement of convenience store frequency, see my previous blog post on the subject). A lot of the bars’ entrances have a structure that sticks out of the ground, and a stairway just inside the door that descends below. It really gives it the “underground” feel.

In most cultures, the weekend bears the highest concentration of people drinking to the point of intoxication. While this is also true in Korea, the weekdays put up a stiff competition. Let’s say you are walking around Seoul’s streets on- a Tuesday, for example. You are likely to encounter a group or lone person stumbling along the sidewalk, having to pause every few steps to regain their balance. The first night I was here I was outside my building and a man was walking by, alone, on the sidewalk. He was very excited about something, and was pumping his fist in the air periodically, speaking as if he were part of a revolution with rebels all around him. Except, he was alone. He was drunk, and was slurring his words. Even though I don’t know the Korean language, I know enough to know that slurring is slurring. He then walked up to a nearby flagpole and with force, punched it once, as one would a punching bag. I could not help but smile in reminiscence of cronies like Mike Andrews.

Another time I was outside the building, reading on these various stone-wall/bench things. Several benches down from me was a guy eating something he had purchased at the convenience store. He vomited on the ground, then collected himself. He got up and walked to the next bench over, to sit down there, perhaps to disassociate himself from his regurgitated filth which still remained by the adjacent bench, I suppose. Not long after, he vomited again, and then proceeded to migrate to the next bench. He did this a total of four times- it was quite hysterical- each time moving a bench closer to the one I sat on. My business carried me elsewhere before I could have found myself a bench-mate.

One time we were waiting for one of our cronies while they were in the convenience store. Across the street was one of those underground bars. A guy came out and walked up the street and past us. He was walking slowly and unsteadily. With every third or fourth step he let out some vomit, yet he not once broke his slow-and-steady pace. He left a trail behind him with splats here, blots there. The bouncers outside the club called it to the attention of a cleaning crew who happened to be sitting on the wall on our side of the street and they were quickly dousing each offended area with kitty litter or disinfectant, I forget. Then I think they followed him into an alley to deal with them.

As I mentioned, binge drinking on weeknights is not uncommon. Sometimes we’ll go eat after work and there’s plenty of outdoor tables with hoards of businessmen, each with a tall beer or two. And though this next fact is a bit peripheral to this post’s topic, its curiousness begs my digression: we once reached a stretch of a few minutes in which the tables and their occupants on the block had reached a generally quiet span of time. Suddenly, and without warning, the table next to us, consisting of about ten businessmen, broke out into a chorus of applause, unaccompanied by any verbal remark. It lasted about three seconds before ending as abruptly as it began, at which the table’s occupants gathered their things to leave.

It is normal, on a weeknight, for many a businessmen to drink enough to the point where their friends have to carry them home- then go to work early the next morning as if it didn’t happen. Also, from time to time I will see that kind of drunk peeing in a sewer grate over here, pissing in an alley over there. It’s funny because at times your path gives you not option other than walking into his vicinity during the act, so you just give him the benefit of the doubt and pretend it’s not happening.

Alcohol laws are a bit more relaxed than they are in many U.S. states, by which I mean that there is no law requiring separate “liquor stores.” Right now if I wanted to I could ride the elevator down to the convenience store in my building and buy some beer or wine. I know that’s not a new concept for many of you but I, being a crony who spent most of his living time in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, find it a bit of a foreign concept. Korean Alcohol laws are more relaxed in other subtle ways, too. And for every Janus there is an equal and opposite Janus. While the U.S. has places like CVS or Walgreens with built-in pharmacies, Korean law requires prescription drug pharmacy stores to stand on their own.

Due in the future: “Korean Vice II”