One Country Gets You Drunk to Bond. The Other Gets You Drunk to Relax. The Outcome Is Different.

🇰🇷 South Korea · 🇬🇧 UK

*By Priya Mehta, The Global Office

South Korea's hoesik — the mandatory after-work dinner and drinking session — is one of the most institutionalised social bonding rituals in the professional world. Attendance is not exactly compulsory, in the same way that your heartbeat is not exactly compulsory: technically optional, in practice non-negotiable. The UK, meanwhile, has its own after-work drinking culture, organised around the pub, that is merely expected rather than mandatory, which is a distinction that sounds more meaningful than it is when you are on your fourth pint with your line manager on a Thursday. Both countries have made alcohol central to workplace bonding. The routes in — and the routes out — are notably different.

Do's & Don'ts

🇰🇷 South Korea

🇬🇧 UK

South Korea: Bonding as Institutional Practice

South Korean workplace bonding culture is built on a concept of collective identity that has no precise equivalent in most Western professional environments. Hoesik — which translates roughly as "company eating" — is an organised after-work gathering that typically proceeds through multiple rounds: a restaurant dinner, often involving soju and Korean barbecue; a second round at a bar or pojangmacha; and, in traditional workplaces, a third round at a norebang, or karaoke room. Participation is a signal of loyalty to the group, and the event's purpose is explicitly to dissolve the formal hierarchy of the office through informal proximity — including, traditionally, the proximity that alcohol creates.

According to research published in the Korean Journal of Business Ethics, hoesik functions as an organisational socialisation tool: it transmits workplace values, reinforces group identity, and provides a setting where the hierarchical constraints of the office are relaxed, allowing juniors and seniors to connect in ways that formal working hours do not permit. Hofstede's cultural dimensions place South Korea at 60 on Power Distance (compared to the UK's 35), and hoesik can be understood partly as the mechanism that manages this gap — it creates a space where hierarchy is temporarily suspended, which paradoxically reinforces it by requiring that the suspension be performed collectively.

This system is, however, under genuine pressure. The MZ generation — South Korean Millennials and Gen Z — has increasingly pushed back against mandatory after-work socialising, viewing it as an imposition on personal time and a relic of hierarchical corporate culture. According to a 2024 analysis by behalfkr.com, younger Korean workers rank work-life balance significantly higher than previous generations, and hoesik participation is declining in companies with younger workforces. Many Korean companies are quietly retooling their bonding culture, replacing mandatory evening events with team lunches, group activities, or voluntary after-work programmes.

UK: Bonding as Social Infrastructure

British workplace bonding is anchored in the pub, which is less a simple drinking venue than a social institution that happens to serve alcohol. The after-work pint — typically initiated by a manager or senior colleague issuing a casual "anyone fancy a drink?" around 5pm — functions as the primary social gateway between the professional and personal domains. Research by London Loves Business and BM Magazine notes that this culture remains widespread, though it is being scrutinised for inclusivity: approximately 20% of the UK population is now teetotal, and younger workers are drinking significantly less, prompting some employers to supplement pub socials with alternatives like cooking classes, paintball, or team sports.

The character of British social bonding differs from the Korean version in one essential respect: it is voluntary in both theory and practice. Nobody will formally pressure you to attend after-work drinks, and declining once will not damage your standing. Declining consistently will register as social withdrawal, but the consequence is mild exclusion rather than the organisational loyalty signal that Korean hoesik carries. British bonding is also built significantly around banter — the exchange of dry, ironic, self-deprecating remarks that functions as a social currency. Being included in the joke is social acceptance; being the last to understand the joke is, temporarily, a social position.

The Reckoning

The counterintuitive comparison is this: South Korean bonding culture is more mandatory and more intense than British bonding culture, yet it is also more socially designed — it has a clear function, a clear structure, and a clear endpoint. You know when you have done your social duty, and you know what it means. British bonding culture is more informal and more voluntary, yet it is also more opaque — the signals are subtler, the expectations are unspoken, and the consequences of misreading them are delivered indirectly, in the British way, over a long period.

For foreigners, Korea's system is exhausting but legible. The UK system is apparently relaxed but requires considerable social fluency to navigate correctly.

The Part the Brochure Left Out

r/korea — One expat who transferred from London described their first hoesik as "a masterclass in things they don't put in the job offer." Three rounds of soju, a norebang session, and a 2am taxi home later, they understood why Korean colleagues budgeted their weekends differently, and why no one at work looked particularly surprised on Monday morning.

Quora — A foreign professional who worked at a major Korean conglomerate wrote that the single most useful thing he did in his first month was learn to pour drinks correctly — for others, always, before himself, with two hands. "It cost me nothing and it bought me more social capital than three months of good work performance."

Internations Seoul — A Canadian marketing director described her first Korean performance review as smooth and well-received, but noted that her relationships with team members were noticeably cooler than her Korean colleagues' — until she attended two consecutive hoesik events. "Something changed after the second one. I can't point to what. But suddenly people asked me about my weekend. That had not happened before."

r/unitedkingdom — An American who relocated to London for a fintech role was puzzled for several months by what he called "the pub paradox" — colleagues who were efficient and professional all day, then became unexpectedly candid about career frustrations, management problems, and personal anxieties after two pints. "Things got said at the pub that would never be said in the office, and nobody ever acknowledged them the next day. It was like a parallel social track."

juggle.jobs — A non-drinking Muslim professional in a London law firm wrote about navigating UK workplace social culture without alcohol. The firm had technically moved to "inclusive" socials, but the after-work pub remained the default, and being the person who ordered sparkling water "never quite felt invisible in the way the inclusion policy suggested it would."

Conclusion

If you are moving from the UK to South Korea, accept that the social bonding system is more ritualised and more mandatory than you are used to, and participate early — the investment pays off in relationships that are, once established, genuinely warm and loyal. If you are moving from South Korea to the UK, accept that the voluntarism is real but the expectation is real too, and that British colleagues who have never pressured you to come to the pub have nonetheless noticed, gently, that you never do.

Both systems use alcohol as a social lubricant. The difference is that in South Korea, this is explicit, structured, and institutionally recognised. In the UK, it is ambient, informal, and occasionally denied.