Of all the things a person can associate with beer, the Korean musical phenomenon Bangtan Sonyeondan—widely known the world over as simply BTS—is likely not on the top of the list.
The seven-member boy band has been credited introducing to its 60-million-and-counting fanbase (ARMY) to a long and illustrious list of subjects they may not have been familiar with before—such as Korean literature and modern art—and the potency of the group’s endorsement shows no signs of slowing down. (As a recent example, band members Jimin and Jungkook sported a pair of T-shirts made by a little-known kayak shop in Old Lyme, Connecticut, during their travelogue video series. The shirts instantly sold out and gave the shop its own 15 minutes of fame).
But when it comes to beer, the beverage itself is a relatively new addition to the Korean Peninsula, a land more famous for its soju (a distilled spirit similar to vodka) than its lagers or ales.
Both BTS and the country that birthed them contain multitudes beyond what’s seen on the surface. When the seven band members are not busy serving out their mandatory military service or plotting their comeback tour for their much-anticipated return in 2025, each member has a host of solo projects. The most beer-relevant of these is Suchwita, the latest variety show by BTS’s rapper-songwriter-producer, Min Yoon-gi, aka Suga.
The premise of the show is that he invites his famous friends, whether K-pop idols, K-drama actors, professional soccer players, or of course, fellow members of BTS, to talk about their careers. There’s only one rule—each guest must bring their own drink to share. Think The Graham Norton Show, but with a BYOB twist. People have long been curious to know what the richest and most famous global superstars are drinking with their friends. Suchwita satisfies this primal curiosity, and does much more.
Contrary to what its name suggests (i.e., a show about getting drunk with Suga), the talk show centers more on the kind of thoughtful, in-depth conversations facilitated by a glass of people’s brew of choice. To date, there has yet to be any actual drunkenness on the show. Rather, the drinks become the ultimate icebreaker, a way for guests to show-and-tell their favorite liquids while making themselves (and their host) more at ease.
It’s no secret that the host is a major whisky connoisseur, so all varieties of whiskies have made frequent appearances, including recent debuts from Taiwan and Japan. But the breadth of the conversations on the show may be surpassed by the variety of liquid treats his guests bring with them. Apart from those tried-and-true spirits, multiple lesser-known drinks have been featured:
- Makgeolli—a milky rice wine similar to soju, but with purported health benefits and a lower alcohol content
- Sikhye—a wine-based cocktail popular during Lunar New Year that can also be made in a non-alcoholic version
- Russian Jack—a surprisingly affordable (and curiously named) white wine from New Zealand
- Leroy Bourgogne Blanc—unlike Russian Jack, this is a shockingly unaffordable French white wine
- Even non-alcoholic beverages make the occasional cameo, from sujeonggwa (a dessert drink laced with cinnamon, ginger, and sugar) to coffee and iced tea.
But the most notable of the drinks on the show may be its beers. Given that beer isn’t endemic to South Korea, the beer-based drinks featured on a talk show by the country’s most famous cultural export (BTS) is a testament to the globalization of the beverage.
It’s been roughly a century since the brew first entered the country, thanks to the influx of Japanese immigrants who brought their favorite things to sip with them. Originally treated as a luxury item whose price tag, once many times the price of a sack of rice, rendered it a treat for the rich, beer had a rocky time on the peninsula through much of the 20th century, thanks to the impacts of war, liberation, and import restrictions on what citizens got to drink. It wasn’t until the turn of the millennium that Korea saw its first generation of microbreweries.
Beer dynasties have continued to merge and grow since then. It only took half a century for beer to go from a measly 5 percent of domestic alcohol sales to dominating the market as the most popular alcoholic drink category in the country (Kim, 2020). Maybe it’s the weather—there’s nothing like a cold bottle of beer to get a person through monsoon season—or the spectacular way in which beer and Korean fried chicken go together, but these days, the average grown-up in South Korea now drinks 83 bottles of beer every year (Neff, 2024).
Apparently, the rising popularity of beer even extends to the rich and famous. On Suchwita, it took 13 episodes for beer to make an official, stand-alone appearance, after a brief cameo when Korean-Canadian hip-hop artist Tablo (of the trio Epik High) brought Guinness Draught, along with Jameson Black Barrel and Bailey’s Irish Cream to make Irish Slammers. When comedian Jo Se-ho brought beer on the show halfway through the 27-episode season, he went all out: Not only did he bring bottles of Kelly malt beer from Korean brewery HiteJinro, he also brought the brand’s latest contraption for delivering it—the Terra Tower. As a beer dispenser, the Tower was specifically designed for making somaek, a beer cocktail that involves a 3:1 ratio of beer and soju. If you’re fancy, you could pour three bottles of beer and one bottle of soju into the tower and watch the tornado function mix the two with enough horsepower to resemble a meteorological event. Or, if you’re anything like Yoon-gi or his comedic guest, you could just eyeball it and pour both into a glass.
The fact that somaek exists is testimony to the versatility of beer and the way the universality of a brewed beverage can take on culturally unique forms—fusion, but for malt drinks. Yoon-gi and Jo Se-ho made it Korea’s most popular beer, but technically any lager-style brew would work with the soju of your choice.
On the very next episode, fellow BTS member J-Hope brought another beer-adjacent beverage in the form of Soonhari Lemonjin, a fruit-flavored soju seltzer. Two episodes later, triple threat actor-singer-songwriter Hwang Min-hyun brought a Belgian white ale with its own ritual. In this case, it involved chilling a can of Hoegaarden Original and a glass, then pouring two-thirds of the beer into the chilled cup and shaking the remainder to supposedly intensify the orange notes of the drink before depositing the rest.
Then in Episode #19, fellow singer-songwriter Kim Jong-Wan also brought Guinness, arguably the most well-known stout in the world. Instead of using the traditional slow “Guinness pour” into a pint glass, they opted to drink it straight from its matching black can. The very next show, Taemin (of K-pop groups SHINee and SuperM fame) brought cans of 1664 Blanc Beer. The host and his guest enjoyed the citrusy French lager while opening up about all the joys and challenges of their day jobs—the kind of revelatory conversation that beer brings out in people. At one point near the end of the interview, Yoon-gi asked Taemin if he felt closer to him now. His guest indicated that yes, he did want more. Maybe he was just talking about friendship and conversation. More likely, he was also talking about the beer.
The Brewers Association and CraftBeer.com are proud to support content that fosters a more diverse and inclusive craft beer community. This post was selected by the North American Guild of Beer Writers as part of its Diversity in Beer Writing Grant series. It receives additional support through a grant from Allagash Brewing Company.
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