Korean Men and Soju--Not a Good Combination

I was listening to NPR the other day and they mentioned the case of Yuon Bum Lee, a Hyundai executive who caused the death of a motorcyclist because he drove intoxicated. I think the reporter said that Lee supposedly had about 20 drinks and decided it would be a good idea to drive himself home. How stupid is that? Instead of owning up to what he did, he took off to Korea and vanished...until now.

I know that it is wrong, but I have this stereotype of Korean men, who drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol when they go out on company functions or you know, just a Tuesday night. In Korean custom, if someone offers you a drink, you have to drink it, plus you then pour a drink for the person who just offered you the drink. As you might guess, this custom can lend itself to many soju shots. This whole scene freaked me out enough that I never went to a Korean night club...or any club of any sorts.

At one of my many jobs, I worked at Stanford in the Registrar's department. My job was to ensure that graduate students met all their university requirements prior to receiving their degree, as well as take in their dissertations. I did this job for only a year but during my time there, I took in the dissertation of a Korean foreign student. His dissertation did not meet the university requirements but it was a quick fix so he was pretty much done...except that he wasn't. Even so, he went out drinking with his friends that weekend and was killed in a car accident because his friend was driving drunk. The registrar came up to me shortly after the accident and asked me to grant the student his PhD posthumously. It was a sad situation but I remember just feeling angry that he and his friends would make such a bad judgment call on their sobriety.

Chang doesn't drink and though sometimes I wish we could share a bottle of wine together every now and then, I really do like the fact that he doesn't drink...shattering the bad stereotype of Korean men that I have in my head from the stories I have heard, and the silly (and highly addictive) Korean dramas that I have watched. Okay, so none of my KA male friends really resemble this mental image I have, but when I hear stories like this of Yuon Bum Lee, it just reinforces it and it really irritates me.