Drinking on the Job
The Politics, Pressures, and Unspoken Rules of Korean Company Outings
Last week marked the beginning of a new semester at my school, and with that came new students, new teachers — and a rowdy end-of-week company outing to kick off the new school year.
After school last Tuesday, all the teachers and administrators headed to a local restaurant to take part in a ubiquitous Korean cultural rite, the hoesik (pronounced “hwayshik”).
To the uninitiated, the hoesik is a relatively bland affair. A stiff, formal dinner with colleagues that’s an extension of the stiff, formal relationship we have with each other at work.
Once you’ve been to one, though, you know it’s anything but. Hoesiks are highly political, alcohol-awashed company events that provide one of the few venues for Korean coworkers to unwind and say what’s on their minds all day at work. The bravado with which Koreans drink, combined with the pressures of work life, means they often get out of hand.
For me, I’ve enjoyed seeing my usually prim-and-proper colleagues revel in grilled pork and alcohol. Navigating the politics and pressures (and unspoken rules) of hoesiks, however, has presented its own challenges as well. I’m here to report on my personal experiences at these events, which are not well known outside Korea.
I drove over to my hoesik last week with two fellow teachers, an older Mr. Lee and a younger Ms. Im. I asked Ms. Im, who’s new to the school, how well she could drink. She looked concerned.
“Do they drink at these?” she said.
Oh, do they drink at these, I thought. She had come to my school fresh out of teaching college. It was her very first hoesik. I offered some seasoned advice and told her if she didn’t want to drink a lot, she shouldn’t sit near the principal.
The seating arrangement at the restaurant — almost always Korean BBQ restaurants — is based on the organizational hierarchy at the school. The principal takes the most important seat, and the powerful people sit around him. There’s a strong correlation between power and alcohol consumption: the principal and those seated around him are always the heaviest drinkers.
My strategy is always to start my night at one of the far tables from the principal, with the older women teachers. There, I can eat dinner and make small talk while postponing the requisite binge drinking. The older women tend to not want to drink, and usually leave early.
Once they’ve left, I move up to the more outgoing young teachers. We’ll pour each other drinks and crack jokes. I’ll practice my Korean, and they their English, alternating between saying “Cheers” and “Gun-bae.” There are three drink options: glasses of cheap Korean beer, soju shots, or a mixture of the two. Two rules: If someone serves you a drink, you drink. If you see someone has an empty glass, it’s polite to refill their cup.
By this point in the night, the principal will start calling over teachers to his table and forcing them to drink. It’s absolutely a form of institutionalized hazing. The teachers reluctantly go. When Ms. Im got called over, we made eye contact as if to say, good luck.
Drinking at hoesik often gets out of control. It’s a tricky balancing act. On the one hand, you’re expected to drink excessive amounts of alcohol. On the other, it’s a work event, and you need to retain at least the semblance of respectability around your colleagues.
I’m used to a clearer division between my personal and professional life, which is more the norm in the US. In Korea, these lines blur. And not just because of the alcohol. Korean work culture is more relationship-based and functions like a family. Your boss is not just your professional mentor, but a personal one as well. That, combined with some of the longest working hours in the OECD, means you may even spend more time with your coworkers than your actual family.
Sometimes the lines blur in a pleasant way. People open up to each other. The science teacher at my school, Kim Hyun-Joon, said last week, “Karl, I am so nervous to talk to you at school, but I really want to. My English is not good.” He smiled. “Except when I drink.”
Other times, I’ve been put in more unpleasant situations. At Tuesday’s hoesik, teachers asked me how much I weighed, how much alcohol I can drink in one sitting, and whether I had a girlfriend — topics that don’t normally come up unless volunteered in the States. Last semester at a hoesik, an older administrator, who had drank her fair share of alcohol that night, came over and sat next to me, held my hand and asked me to call her “older sister,” a “cutesy” form of address in Korean that I did not want to say.
Getting put in those kind of uncomfortable situations, especially when there’s alcohol involved, reminds me that I still prefer more clear boundaries between personal and professional life.
I understand the cultural context behind hoesiks: Koreans need an outlet to unwind and open up with each other. And what a better way to reinforce the office-as-family bonds than over dinner and drinks. It makes sense. I mean, in the States I’ve gone out and gotten drinks with my coworkers. In the US it’s just not as regular and not as ritualized as in Korea. (And, notably, in the US drinking is never forced.)
Trying to rationalize the binge drinking of hoesik culture makes me wonder, though, how much living and working in Korea has warped my perception of things.
I was talking to my girlfriend back in the States about how I felt bad for leaving hoesik early last Tuesday. “I really wanted to stay out later and go to noraebang [karaoke] with the young teachers,” I told her.
“Oh god,” she said, “You’re really starting to think like a Korean.”
In Korea, it’s easy to see excessive drinking and dismiss it as completely normal. There’s an entire blog dedicated to pictures of drunk Koreans passed out in the streets. It’s one thing to drink a lot with friends, but when that intensity enters a work event, like a hoesik, that’s when problems inevitably come up.
Drinking can be fun, even with coworkers, but should not be forced. You shouldn’t have to do shots with your boss and drink to excess in order to get a promotion or special privileges at work.
We will have several more hoesiks throughout the course of this next semester. And to be honest, I’m looking forward to them.
The company outings raise serious concerns about blurred lines and institutionalized hazing, but at the end of the day, for me, hoesiks are more fun than stressful. I’m not Korean. I’m not expected to drink as much, and the principal doesn’t call me over to do shots with him like he does the other Korean teachers.
I’m an outsider, an observer. I can see and appreciate the problems with hoesiks, and at the same time avoid getting sucked too far into the politics and excess.
I may be starting to think more like a Korean — but I’m still a few hoesiks away from wishing they weren’t a part of Korean culture.
