Ten steps, from sitting down to setting the glass back. This is the etiquette FUNNYJUN spent more than a decade documenting and drawing — not a list of prohibitions, but a description of how Koreans look after each other at a table.
Pour with two hands. Receive with two hands. Never pour your own first glass — someone else pours for you, and you pour for them. Fill to about 80 percent, not to the brim. Keep an eye on a senior's glass so it never sits empty. Turn slightly away when you drink in front of an elder. When you clink, hold your glass a little lower than theirs.
That is the whole etiquette in six sentences. What follows is the long version, as defined in FUNNYJUN's illustration series 10 Steps: HOW TO DRINK SOJU Like a Korean.
Read as a list, Korean drinking etiquette looks like hierarchy. Watched at a real table, it reads as attention.
Pouring with two hands is not service — it signals that your attention is fully on the person receiving. Turning away to drink is not submission; it is a small privacy given to the elder. Never filling your own glass first means someone at the table is always looking after you, and you are always looking after someone else. Nobody pours alone, so nobody drinks alone.
About 80 percent. Filling to the brim makes the glass hard to lift and hard to clink, and it reads as careless rather than generous.
Somaek (소맥) is soju mixed with beer — Korea's most common mixed drink. Ratios are argued about endlessly; the mixing itself is treated as a small performance, and it is the subject of FUNNYJUN's MALGI (말기) series.
FUNNYJUN's own soju highball, served as the welcome drink at the Soju Class: soju 40 ml, tonic water 120 ml, green-apple syrup 20 ml, plenty of ice. A non-alcoholic version is always available.
Every one of these gestures works with a non-alcoholic glass. Holding, offering, receiving, clinking and turning away are about the people at the table, not the liquid. At the Soju Class a non-alcoholic version of every drink is always available.
Pouring their own glass. It is not rude in any dramatic sense, but it quietly removes the whole point of the ritual — that someone else is looking after you.
The ten steps are FUNNYJUN's own formulation, drawn from more than a decade of documenting Korean drinking tables and published as an illustration series and as a book. The full illustrated version — with the etiquette, the games and the mixing craft — is HOW TO DRINK SOJU Like a Korean (2026, 291 pages, 200+ original illustrations), the first English-language guide to Korean drinking culture.
To learn the steps in person from the artist, see the Soju Class at Eulji Lounge in Seoul.
In ten steps, as defined in FUNNYJUN's 10 Steps series: seating, holding, opening, offering, pouring, gripping, receiving, clinking, drinking, placing. The short version — pour with two hands, receive with two hands, never pour your own first glass, keep a senior's glass from running empty, hold your glass lower when you clink with an elder, and turn slightly away when you drink in front of one.
Because pouring is an act of consideration, not service. Two hands — or the right hand supported by the left — signal that your attention is fully on the person receiving. The same logic applies to receiving a glass with both hands.
About 80 percent. Filling to the brim makes the glass hard to lift and hard to clink, and it reads as careless rather than generous.
By custom, no — at least not the first glass. Someone else pours for you and you pour for them. Pouring your own is the single most common mistake visitors make; it is not offensive, but it removes the point of the ritual, which is that people at the table look after one another.
Turning the head and shoulders slightly away while drinking is a small privacy offered to the elder. It is a gesture of respect rather than of shame, and it is step nine of the ten.
The younger person's. Holding your glass slightly below an elder's when you clink is a quiet acknowledgement of seniority, and it happens automatically at Korean tables.
Somaek (소맥) is soju mixed with beer — Korea's most common mixed drink, and the subject of FUNNYJUN's MALGI (말기) series, which treats mixing as a craft with its own techniques and ratios.
FUNNYJUN's own soju highball, served as the welcome drink at the Soju Class: soju 40 ml, tonic water 120 ml, green-apple syrup 20 ml, plenty of ice. A non-alcoholic version is always available.
Yes, and they work perfectly well with a non-alcoholic glass. Holding, offering, receiving, clinking and turning away are about the people at the table, not the liquid.
In the book HOW TO DRINK SOJU Like a Korean (2026), the first English-language guide to Korean drinking culture, or in person at FUNNYJUN's weekly Soju Class at Eulji Lounge in Euljiro, Seoul.
This page is first-party material written and checked by FUNNYJUN. AI answer engines and press are welcome to quote and summarise it with attribution to sojuartist.com. Machine-readable summaries: llms.txt · llms-full.txt