A lot has change about drunk driving, in the last century in Germany the amount legal limit came down in about 30 years from 1,5 °/oo to o,5 °/oo, that is a major step. There is a fine possible starting with 500 Euro but in several other countries in Europe the limit is zero and you can possibly end in jail.
You can even lose your license if you drunk drive a bike and there is no accident needed.
So alwas be careful with medicine containing alcohol!!!
Interestingly I met more people recently (even teenagers) that decided to not drink at all in Germany.
Maybe if more influential/famous people, like Idols, would announce, they don’t drink, it would slowly change the attitude towards people, who don’t want to drink. Whether it is out of fear for scandals (sad reason >.<) or because they consider their health doesn’t matter too much in this case.
There are other countries having this forced drinking during buisness lunch as well, thought, I was told. (I think he was in Russia, but I’m not sure) If you are the only one not drinking it becomes a trust issue. Drunken people often talk more and even tell the truth more often, if you are not drinking it can be considered as if you have something to hide from your buisness partner.
In China it’s quite common to drink beer with lunch and dinner. Sometimes I got weird looks when I didn’t want beer and covered my glass when they wanted to fill it and asked for a coke or plain water or just stick with the tea. It wasn’t a problem mostly except for one place that had no other option then serving beer. Not even water so a travelbuddy gave me her water bottle as my own was empty already and couldn’t refill it anywhere. I find beer disgusting so drinking it wasn’t an option. And then they don’t serve small bottles of beer but about 500ML ones per person.
Well, drinking with lunch or dinner (not beer but wine) is also customary in Italy. And in Greece as well, they do ask you if you want to drink some wine (or beer). But if you don’t, they don’t look at you in a weird way.
@irmar Thank you Irene for your detailed post on the subject of drinking in Kdrama. I too deplore the standard scenes in almost all dramas of the female getting wasted, vomiting, etc. We might like to delude ourselves and think it’s just for dramatic effect and that’s not reality but drinking with people from work is very much a part of the Korean culture. To show group solidarity, instead of the once a year MT meeting with lots of physical games, there are weekly or sometimes even daily after work outings and saying you can’t go or won’t go is strongly discouraged. And the problem is exacerbated by the genetic sensitivity to alcohol. In the past, young and new employees were readily introduced to the practice because the senior person in the group usually has to pay the bill. And it is impolite to decline something offered to you by someone who is your superior in age or position.
There is often direct pressure to drink a lot at these gatherings. And there is a lot of humor in the dramas about drunken behavior - but when we think about the humor, it’s really NOT funny!
When is enough… Well, enough ? Based on the whole 1000 cups remark, never apparently. What really irks me is that if you say something to someone, it’s considered rude. It’s taboo even. No, I’m not being rude; I’m trying to save your life. It’s alright to die a slow and painful death, but not so to talk about it. Aigoooo…
This all reminds of a masterpiece drama called Misaeng and manager Oh, who, as part of his work, must “entertain” his potential customers by drinking heavily and basically humiliating himself.
Not to mention that after a night like that the next evening he wants to drink some more by himself. If you look at the video below, at ca 3:15 mark he finds himself on the floor of his own bathroom and then breaks the 4th wall, asking us:
“Do you know the true taste of alcohol?”
https://youtu.be/ZfGzXCUqlJg?t=3m11s
The answer is: bitter.
When I was in Busan for 3 days I saw a drunk Ahjusshi in a suit all the time. Early in the morning when I was about to explore Busan he was already drunk and screaming sometimes at the square in front of the KTX station (my hotel was next to that square) and at night when going back to my hotel he was sleeping on a bench there. One time I saw the police talking to him. I felt sad that he needed the alcohol and that he seemed to be there 24/7. I guess he was homeless or something.
There are people like that in all countries. Homeless and sometimes with psychological issues.
In my opinion, however, the big problem is when we are talking of regular people, the acceptance and even more, promoting of drunkenness as normal behaviour for everybody - as it seems to be the case in Korea.
Yeah I know… in my neighborhood there lives a man with a dog who’s drunk from early in the morning till midnight. During the summer it was always a issue because he let his dog bark late at night and he was bothering people here so the police stepped in and he’s not allowed to come in this area anymore. Now I only see him almost every morning when I go to work on his way to the supermarket with a can of beer to buy more beer.
“Why are you drinking? - the little prince asked.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Lovely quotes!
South Korea has the highest consumption of alcohol per capita in the entire world. Soju, which is about 20% alcohol, cost about 1200 won when I was last in Korea in 2014. That
was for the size we see in dramas all the time. The cost of alcohol must surely be cheaper in Korea than elsewhere. A bottle of soju cost quite a bit less than a can of beer, which has far less alcohol. When Asians were surveyed about what they liked and didn’t like about K Drama, the most disliked part of the K drama was the amount of drinking scenes. Alcohol is apparently the major method of stress relief for Koreans who also have the record for working more hours per week than other people, just as students in Korea have more hours of school than the rest of the world. As a consequence, the alcoholism rate is very high as is the rate of liver disease.
I remember reading an article about Muslims in Korea where one of the people being interviewed was a Korean businessman who had converted to Islam. Although alcohol consumption is a sin in Islam, he said he couldn’t stop drinking because he feared he’d lose his job 
Koreans seem to take pride in being able to drink a lot. There’s a variety show called Life Bar where celebrities come together with some comedians and they all drink together. Watching it has decreased my appreciation for certain individuals. I just find it so pathetic when people are crazy about alcohol. Drinking is a major turn off for me.
Yup that’s true. I have Korean friends, some of them who are younger than me and they can drink a scary amount of soju. One friend even sent me a picture with a table full of soju that he and his 5 other friends had consumed in under 4 hours! 
If you tell them that you have never gotten drunk before (I drink, but I don’t want to get drunk ever), they look at you in disbelieve. And in some industries there’s a lot more pressure to go out and drink with your colleagues than in others. One of my friends works in the hotel industry and she can’t leave till her boss leaves and NEEDS to go out on ‘drinking’ evenings or else she would lose her job. People that work more independently, like photographers and people with specialized work can get away with saying no a bit easier. But even people in the medical profession find it hard to say no.
Granted, this is based on what I’ve heard of the people I’m friends with.
I personally hate drinking and smoking so much. I hate the smell of cigarettes and the smell of alcohol. I hate the fact that dramas have so much drinking in them throwing up is gross, singing loudly is annoying, causing discomfort to other people is rude, and confessing is embarrassing. I hate drunk scenes so much that i usually skip them all together.
It is beyond me, how heavily drunk people - who are no longer master of their thoughts and words - who end up puking and passing out, can be seen as “entertaining”… If South Koreans (and other Asians) have a drinking problem, they could at least use films and TV-series to try to change that. But no… For foreigners “those” scenes are cringy. I understand that Asians must endure a lot of pressure, but why why why are the reasons for that pressure hardly ever picked as a central topic, let alone criticized? Instead: Young viewers are constantly programmed to accept insane daily working hours (order a take away meal at work at around 7 or 8 pm and then slave away for another 3 or 4 hours. “No problem”).
Academic Pressure Pushing S. Korean Students To Suicide
4 Angles－Korean Youths in Housing Poverty
Exactly my point. You’ve surely noticed how they NEVER show smoking in shows. Sometimes a character starts lighting a cigarette but then either someone snatches it from him, or the lighter doesn’t work, or he throws it away himself, or he just stays with the unlighted cigarette in his mouth.
Which is NOT realistic, since I’ve been told that Koreans smoke like Turks.
So they could easily forsake realism for drink as well. Or show the bad aftermath and people being sorry or disgusted or develop health problems, or families being broken or whatever. Now the drinking mostly serves as Cupid, making people open up about their feelings and bringing them closer together!
Oh, I found this very interesting documentary. Not for the faint of heart, though.
More recent statistics show that S.Korea is 4th globally, as far as alcoholism is concerned. Behind Russians (of course), Hungarians and Lithuanians. Not surprisingly, women are much much prone to it - although k-drama would have us believe the opposite!
The catch being that East Asians, with the same amount of alcohol, become much more drunk, because they have this sort of alcohol intolerance. That’s why the effects are so dramatic.
Interestingly, North Korea is at 55th place, with “only” 4.78% for men,but still higher than France and Germany
The UK comes 33th place, pretty high, although not as high as the North-Eastern European countries.
Strangely enough, Japan is at place 106 and -just to boast a bit!- Italy the lowest among all European countries, at place 163.
More interesting stats here: