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Samsung Sets New Guidelines For Alcoholic Beverages
jones_supa writes "To tame the vigorous drinking habits of the Koreans, the parent company, Samsung Group, implemented a strict code of conduct for staff dinners at Samsung. Deeply ingrained in South Korean business culture, hoesik is a hierarchical bonding experience which usually involves free-flowing alcohol, often forced upon lower-ranked staff who are expected to serve and entertain their superiors. The new rules banned rituals like beolju, or forcing drinks on others, and sabalju — the mixing of several different beverages to make a potent punch. An employee of nine years, said the company had implemented a rule known as '1-1-9', which restricts hoesik to one sitting, one type of alcohol and a cut-off point of 9pm in order to prevent excessive drinking. Samsung's move comes as South Korea has more broadly made some steps towards tackling excessive alcohol consumption and drink-induced violence. South Koreans are by far the heaviest drinkers in Asia and the biggest consumers of spirits in the world, according to the World Health Organization."
There is an old saying in North Korea which roughly translates as "Drink until you see unicorns". So far, so good.
Yeah, yeah. Why people equate heavy drinking with some sort of toughness, I'll never know. It's just one means of group bonding through shared experience. Personally, I'd rather hang out with some mountain climbers than a bunch of sloppy drunks. Samsung management might be figuring this out and attempting to change the company culture.
I wish them luck.
Have gnu, will travel.
I went and visited a 55 year old Chinese investor. When I'd last studied business-in-Asia in the late 1980s, this /. article describes what it was like in every Asian city. I asked my host if that's what I was going to have to prepare for. No, he said, it's not like that anymore. He explained: " I mean, it used to be like that. But those guys are all dead."
Gently reply
This isn't the kind of anecdote you bring math to.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
When I was in the Air Force in the early '70s, I spent 18 months in South Korea (it was a 1 year tour, but I fell in love with the place and the people, and got it extended by 6 months). I was told to think of them as "the Irish of the Orient". (You can think of me as a member of the Irish of the Occident.) As stereotypes go, it was pretty accurate. All it took was "So's your old man" for a serious fight to break out. I witnessed several, between and among people of both sexes, in various states of sobriety. I was even more amazed by how hard they worked, regardless of how hung over or beaten up they were. Looks like not much has changed in 40 years. Samsung should be careful about playing with a formula that seems to work rather well.
Just remember:
1. Don't ask your Korean friends for drinking contest.
2. When they give dinner at 6pm eat it. That's the last meal you'll get for the day. The rest of the evening would be liquid.
3. Don't wasted on your first bar. That's just the beginning of your "evening" tour.
4. When they offer you "nuclear-bear", just say no.
5. The same if they offer you orange juice at the end. Ask what inside those juice other than the orange.
Prepare a headache pill for the next morning, cause you still have 3 days more for your training seasons. Don't fall for "farewell party", you'll miss your plane the next day... (that's all that i remember. I think.)
Mountain climbing is dangerous, whereas the worst that will happen in a night on the town is you falling off a bar stool.
Not true. Many more people die from acute alcohol poisoning than from mountain climbing accidents.
Sheer body mass probably also plays a non-trivial role. Six-foot, 250+-pound white guys are pretty common. Asians of similar mass certainly exist (and bigger!) but they're pretty rare. Assuming it's not all fat, a 250-pound person has a big advantage over a 125-pound person when it comes to tolerating alcohol.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I'm a native Korean, Samsung Electronics employee for the last couple of years, although the following text does not represent my employer.
Actually the reason behind this seems to be twofold - health (you can't expect somebody who drunk heavily to perform adequately next day), cultural (Samsung isn't simply a Korean company anymore), and probably legal (the company is liable if drinking was part of the routine job, and it didn't do anything about it).
Decades ago, the only people working for Samsung (and probably most Korean companies) were mostly male Koreans aged somewhere around 30 to 50. (In the eighties, Korean women had a difficult time getting jobs on large corporates (except as secretaries or factory production workers) and were routinely fired for getting married) The only thing that they could do in common was drinking. Considering that Asian people have a blurry boundary between personal and professional issues, drinking (and for executives, playing glof) was a very essential task for successful working. Actually, companies even had "drinking VP"s who's job was to drink with business contacts every night, and nothing else.
Fast forward to 2012. Samsung now has some 300k employees, and more than half of those people are non-Koreans. Many employees have their spouse also working, which means somebody has to take care of their kids if they have to drink late. There are many non-Korean people everywhere, even on the Korean campuses. Business contacts are no longer limited to Asian countries. Suddenly, it doesn't make much sense to socialize by drinking heavily. You can't expect to be able to socialize with other people if they don't drink much, or don't drink at all.
The problem was that this "heavy drinking" thing was a sort of a "tradition". Many people, especially junior/senior management people who were working for Korean companies for decades, found themselves uncomfortable to socialize with other people without excessive soju or whisky or whatever. So, corporate policy kicks in, and tries to change the culture. Not only by simply banning "drinking", but by trying to suggest alternative methods (e.g., sports activities or doing charity work).