A pharmacy in the Seoul neighbourhood of Myeongdong advertises a 'best of the best' package of hangover cures for local and foreign customers.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
In pharmacies and convenience stores across South Korea, a new product type jostles for space with the face masks, serums and other skin-care solutions that have driven the worldwide K-beauty craze.
In gel, tablet and powder form, various herbal and other solutions promise freedom from what poet Marilyn Hacker called “the downside of any evening’s bright exchanges, scribbled with retribution”: the hangover.
South Koreans are famous for being boozy, exceptionally by East Asian standards. In 2022, the last year for which comparative figures are available, they consumed on average eight litres of alcohol a person – almost two litres more than Thai or Japanese drinkers, and more than double the Chinese average.
While that puts them on par with Canada, and way behind Australia and much of Eastern Europe, soju-sloshing South Koreans are far more likely to drink hard liquor than any other country, outdoing even Russia.
“Koreans are known for drinking a lot,” said Lee Seung-yeon, a 59-year-old pharmacist. At her shop in Seoul’s Myeongdong district, she has bundled several products into a single plastic pack that promises the “best of the best” hangover cures, all personally curated – and tested – by her.
Ms. Lee said she regularly sells the pack, which is on prominent display at the counter, to both locals and tourists, many of whom consider hangover cures a must-buy souvenir, just as face masks were before they took off globally.
The size of the Korean hangover-cure market has grown 30 per cent, to upward of 350 billion won last year ($327-million) from 270 billion won ($252-million) in 2019, according to Nielsen Korea. Some projections estimate it could be worth more than double that by the end of the decade.
South Korean convenience stores regularly stock a wide selection of hangover cures, from gels and liquids to powders.James Griffiths/The Globe and Mail
Most cures contain a mixture of traditional medicine ingredients – such as Hovenia dulcis, or Japanese raisin tree, long used in East Asia as a hangover remedy – and supplements including taurine (common in energy drinks) and L-arginine (an amino acid that can lower blood pressure).
However, there is little reliable evidence to suggest the companies marketing these products have come up with anything more than a decent placebo. Earlier this year, South Korea’s Food and Drug Safety Ministry said it would require clinical trials for hangover cures and ban products that make outlandish, unsupported claims.
For Park Chaeo-won, a 20-year-old student in Seoul, scientific rigour is beside the point: “They don’t work, but I still use them.”
She said it’s become the norm that before a big drinking session young people will take a hangover cure, then maybe another the next morning in the hopes of undoing the preceding hours of debauchery, similar to how Canadian students might chug a sports drink before they go to sleep.
But even many older South Koreans see hangover cures as something of a necessity, given the still-pervasive culture of mid-week drinking, according to Ms. Lee, the pharmacist.
“My son works in Canada, and he only goes out to drink on the weekend,” she said. “Whereas in Korea, sometimes your boss would ask you to drink on a Monday, and the next day, you still have to go to work.”
This is the dark side of the hangover cure boom. Despite a ruling in 2007 that made it an offence for bosses to force subordinates to drink, after-work boozing remains common in many industries, and the pressure to participate can be intense.
In September, a court in Seoul ruled that the death of a Samsung sales manager was an industrial accident when he succumbed to acute alcohol poisoning after three nights of consecutive work events, one of which saw three dozen employees consume a total of 34 bottles of soju and 46 bottles of beer.
Younger generations are starting to push back against this cultural practice, and alcohol consumption has been steadily falling from a 2015 high, particularly among Gen Z and millennial women.
Seoul-based finance worker Lee Su-jeung, 36, said the increasing presence of female managers – once a rarity in starkly gender-divided South Korea – has had an effect: All her bosses are women, and there is little pressure to get drunk at work events.
But even so, Ms. Lee said, on the occasions she and her colleagues do drink, they make sure to take a hangover cure first.
“Usually someone goes and purchases them on behalf of everyone. You can expense it.”
With reporting from Ryu Seoyeon