​Korean Soju – The Spirit of a Nation

Korean soju is often compared to vodka or shōchū; it is a clear, low-alcohol spirit, similar to vodka but sweeter, with an average ABV between 15-45 percent.

It is Korea’s national drink and the number one selling by volume, distilled spirit; its origins can be traced back hundreds of years.

When we talk about soju, we must be aware that there are two types: a traditional one, with no additives or dilution, and diluted soju, with added sweeteners and lower alcohol content.

In eastern Asia, Soju was first distilled around the mid-1250s A.D., during the Mongol empire expansion (1206-1368) and the war with Korea.
For centuries, soju was traditionally made from rice. However, during the Korean War, producers had to rely on alternative starches such as sweet potatoes, tapioca, or wheat due to rice shortages.
Traditionally, it is drunk as a shot and consumed with food, but it can also be a versatile base for delicious cocktails.

History of the Korean Soju

Alcoholic drinks have been known to Koreans since the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC – 668 CE); grain-based wines, such as chiju and nangnangju, were top-rated at that time and were part of the people’s everyday life, but the way they were made was different and unusual, from a contemporary point of view.

Though used in that period, the fermentation process was slightly different from the process we know today.

People chew the starches, spit them out, and let them stay a few days in a container for the fermentation to begin. This process works because the enzymes in the saliva break down the starch and turn the carbohydrates into sugar, creating a suitable environment for the yeast to trigger the fermentation process, leading to a low alcoholic beverage of around 2-6 degrees of alcohol.

A similar method is still being used today in Peru to make Masato, an alcoholic drink made based on yuca.

Note: if raw yuca is swallowed, it can be very poisonous.

Goreyo Era (918–1392)

Introduction of Distillation Spirits in the Goreyo period

During the Goryeo Dynasty, wine brewing continued its diversification to include makgeolli (unfiltered rice wine using the sediments of the fermented product.) and cheongju (refined makgeolli with golden clear colour, with no sediments).

The Goryeo period of Korean history coincided with the formation of two significant external political and economic changes: the Mongol Empire and the already-established Silk Road. These two external factors contributed further to the expanded trade relations and significantly influenced the introduction and development of the distillation process into the Korean peninsula.

Most of Korea’s international connections were not confined only to the Chinese world but also to regions beyond East Asia through the northern nomadic states, such as Khitan Liao (an imperial dynasty of China that existed between 916 and 1125), which acted as an international intermediary link between the Chinese and Islamic worlds.

There are not many records from that period to clearly describe the rise of soju popularity and the origins of the distillation process used to make the spirit(s), but based on the archeological and socioeconomic environment at that time, one can speculate and explore where the possible origins of the distillation process in Korea came from.

There are a couple of theories about when the distillation process was introduced to the Korean peninsula and who contributed to its widespread use.

1. First, the distillation was known to the Koreans through their interaction with the Chinese world before the Mongol invasion.
2. Second, the Mongols introduced distillation in Korea around the mid-1200s A.D. during their empire expansion, multicultural knowledge transfer, and the war with Korea.

Were the Mongols the ones who widely spread the distillation process during the late Goryeo period, using their portable distillation apparatus and knowledge acquired from the Islamic world and China, or were the Chinese, with their long history of alcohol brewing, the ones who introduced it to Korea even before the Yuan-China Dynasty?

These are fascinating questions worth exploring.

Pre-Mongols Chinese distillation

The origin of pre-Mongol Chinese distillation has a compelling argument for producing a drink similar to soju.

The Chinese have a long tradition of making alcohol, as shown by the earliest chemically confirmed alcoholic beverage from nine thousand years ago.
A piece of evidence of a fermented beverage made of wild grapes (the earliest attested use), hawthorn, rice, and honey. ¹was discovered at Jiahu in the Yellow River Valley of China (Henan province), ca. 7000-6600 B.C. (Early Neolithic Period).

Chinese invented distillation methods before the Mongols. It is believed that distillation technology existed in the late Han period (206 BCE-220 CE), but the earliest evidence discovered dates to the Jin and Southern Song. A still dating to the 12th century was found during an archaeological dig at Qinglong in Hebei.²

As distillation was known to the Chinese long before the Mongol empire, and a distilled grain spirit called shaojiu was already consumed, there is the possibility that distillation was introduced to Korea before or at the beginning of the XI century during the Song period (960–1279). At the same time, though, it doesn’t explain why the explosion and popularity of distilled alcohol in Korea didn’t happen till the late 13 and 14th centuries when its production was significantly increased and influenced by the Mongols’s use of the arak technology.

Mongols distillation

Several Joseon-era Korean scholar sources say that soju originated in the Yuan period. According to these sources, soju was transferred from China to Korea during the latter part of the Goryeo period. This matches well with the sudden and simultaneous rise of soju attested by the sources at that time, which might explain the soju’s fast rise to popularity.

Near the end of the Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392), the Mongols had already conquered much of Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Eastern Europe. They were one of the largest empires in human history.

At the same time, the Arab/Islamic world was in rapid economic, scientific, and cultural development, known as the Islamic Golden Age (7-14th)centuries.

Among their many scientific achievements was improving the distillation technique, initially used primarily for perfumery and medical purposes. Subsequently, they could distill one of the oldest known spirits, arak (grape and aniseed).

During their invasions and close interaction with the Islamic world, the Mongols acquired the distilling technique from the Persians. They later introduced it to the Korean peninsula in the mid-1250s as part of a much larger exchange of material and intellectual culture throughout Eastern Asia.

Another possible theory of the Mongols’ role in distillation development before the encounter with the Islamic world is that they were already familiar with the process through their interaction with the Chinese and used the Persians’ know-how to develop further their own mare’s milk-based distilled spirit, arakhi, or arajhi (most likely derived from the Arabic drink arak).

The name arak was used as a base, a synonym at that time to describe distilled alcohol made in different regions, from West Asia to Eastern Europe—Arak in Persia, rakia in Bulgaria -X century, raki in Turkey around XIII century.

It also suggests that the Persians influenced the Mongols in adopting and using the newly acquired distillation technique to make their spirit based on the widely available mare’s milk or grapes.

The grapes and mare’s milk, though, were not widely available sources in China and Korea, where there was an abundance of grains, which also meant they had to adapt their distillation technique to the available sources, as the Arab/Persian spirit-making based on grapes didn’t need fermentation starter (nuruk ).

As the Chinese were already making their distillate shaojiu, albeit on a much smaller scale, it seems plausible that the Mongols, due to their use of mobile distillation stills, military invasions, and nomadic lifestyle, adapted the arak distillation technology they came across in West Asia to produce and popularize a grain spirit on a much larger scale.

Therefore, shaojiu distinguished grain-based liquor from traditional arak grape-based and arajhi milk-based spirits.

Whether the Chinese or the Mongols were the first ones to distill soju will always spark a debate, but I believe there is one fact that can not be disputed, and that is the essential roles of the Mongol empire in:

• Disseminating the West Asia and Chinese distillation processes widely
• Improving the existing Chinese distillation technique
• They were making it possible for the different regions in their vast empire to produce distillates by sourcing and using local ingredients.

Different cultural connections and immersion became a norm in Goryeo society when it became an essential part of the Mongol Empire through its interaction with China, the Islamic world, and Europe.

These trade relations brought new global trends and foreign drinks like kumis, arak, and grape wines to Goreyo.³

Many people went to China for official scholarly exchanges or trade; the massive movement and exchange of people and knowledge between China and Korea contributed to cultural and technological transfers, including distillation.

At that time, making the spirit was pricey, and it was exclusively used by the aristocrats and primarily for medicinal purposes, as rice was a precious commodity—only high-class families who could afford rice and made their yeast could make traditional soju.

Koreans also created their technique of brewing cooked rice, yeast, and water by combining distillation with grain fermentation to produce noju (single distillation) and hwalloju (multiple distillations).

They added a small amount of cooked rice to the already fermented mixture, aiming at improving the flavour and increasing the alcohol strength, and developed their technique of making alcohol using rice and other grains to distill their spirit, soju (소주; 燒酒), meaning “burned liquor). The name of the distilled drink then was arak-ju, which is closely related to arak.

The traditional stills for distilling soju in Korea were called soju kori (sojutgori). A strained wine was placed in the bottom pot, and another smaller pot was positioned upside-down to cover the bottom pot. The upper pot has a lid for cooling water. To produce soju, first, one heats the pot; then, one pours cold water onto the lid so that the evaporated alcohol inside the pot condenses and collects on the lid, and from there, it gradually trickles down into the waiting pot. ⁴

Many distilleries were set up around the ancient capital of the Goryeo dynasty, Kaesong (Songdo). Subsequently, through the invasions of Kublai Khan, the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, Soju production was spread south to Andong City, where the Mongols were staging their troops during their unsuccessful attack on Japan (1270- 80).

Andong Soju began as a home-based distilled spirit and is considered a direct ancestor to today’s traditional soju.

The period of the Goryeo dynasty can also be considered a time when grain fermentation and distillation were established and became part of Korean life.

Joseon era

During the Joseon (Chosŏn) era (1392-1910), Soju production was increased through home brewing and distillation. The drink quickly spread throughout the peninsula and the nearby islands, such as Jeju and Jinju.

Over time, glutinous rice was replaced by non-glutenous rice, and multiple brewing was used instead of single brewing.
Many different herbs, roots, fruits, and flowers were used to make more than 60 herbal wines. Some other famous wines were ginseng, pine, and bamboo.

They were mixed with soju using a new technique of combining distillation and fermentation, thus creating beverages such as summer wine (gwahaju) – Soju and rice wine, and pine sprouts wine (songsunju)⁵

That popularity also led to overconsumption and raised societal concerns about how to regulate overindulgence.

A few times during the Joseon Dynasty, soju production was banned across the country for various reasons, such as when its consumption was seen as a debauchery tool and when there was a short rice supply.

One of the most popular Sojus during the Joseon Dynasty was Samhaeju, a luxury alcohol made from lots of rice and brewed three times. It was served exclusively to yangban (the ruling gentry class) and remained so until the production was halted during the Japanese colonization of Korea (1910-1945).

The 1900s

Before Japan annexed Korea, rice wines and soju, much of it home-brewed, were the Korean people’s everyday alcoholic drinks.

However, during the Japanese occupation, there were some disruptions, changes in distillation technology, and heavy taxation on domestic liquor production, leading to the diminishing popularity and almost complete disappearance of traditional Soju brewing.

In 1916, due to the implementation of severe control of alcohol liquor manufacture, a variety of Korean alcoholic drinks from basic makgeolli, soju, and other high-quality Korean traditional alcoholic caused severely diminished production.

Soju production changed from home-produced spirit to industrially-distilled alcohol made from tapioca or potatoes, diluted with water, and flavoured artificially.

By 1930, the distillation of many unique regional and provincial liquors was almost nonexistent, and many of the local Soju brewing recipes were unfortunately lost.

The production of Korean Soju and rice wines, which suffered under Japanese rule, was revived after the liberation of the country in 1945, but that didn’t help the production of the traditional soju, as it was largely absent from Korea’s market until the mid-1980s when new governmental support for traditional Korean culture began to support it as a minsokchu, or national folk liquor.⁶

The support behind the effort to revive the production of traditional soju didn’t help much, as inexpensive, factory-produced soju has continued to grow in popularity in Korea, as opposed to the traditional distilled one due to its low cost and price.

During the Korean War (1951–1953) and the years following the war, the raw product making soju, especially rice, was periodically scarce, and a few years later, it led to a ban on using rice as a base for making soju.

Between 1965 and 1991, the Korean government forbade the direct production of soju from fermented rice mash.

Instead, highly rectified spirits from any source were mixed with water and flavourings to create what is known as diluted soju. The government also changed the way Soju producers operated. All the small distilleries were reorganized and merged into regional and provincial conglomerates.

After the ban on using rice was lifted, the diluted soju remained the most popular version, and the continued growing demand helped it propel to the most consumed spirit in the world by volume.

During the 1990s, distillers attempted to increase the market share of more traditional soju (premium Soju). Still, these products were invariably more expensive than the standard drink, so they were unsuccessful. Additionally, their more robust flavours and higher ethanol contents did not follow the trend toward lighter drinks.

However, during the past decade, Korean consumers have become more aware of the qualities of the traditional spirit. As distillers noticed that trend, they started responding by producing milder premium versions using conventional methods and presenting them in modern, attractive bottles.

In the next post of the Soju series, we will briefly examine the distillation techniques used and their effect on the final product.

1. https://www.penn.museum/sites/biomoleculararchaeology/resources/ancient-china/#:~:text=The%20earliest%20chemically%20confirmed%20alcoholic,hawthorn%2C%20rice%2C%20and%20honey.
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_drinks_in_China
3. https://doi.org/10.22679/avs.2019.4.2.002
4. https://books.google.ca/books?id=WTQTEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=sojukori+stills&source=bl&ots=ebwAF4b6dx&sig=ACfU3U2dIPBMGu7Amhw2uFV4Llefegrv5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ3OSJsPX8AhXvkIkEHZdXAisQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=sojukori%20stills&f=false
5. https://books.google.ca/books?id=-v5aCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT13&lpg=PT13&dq=hwalloju+koreaN+DRINK&source=bl&ots=5nBE9Ts9Sm&sig=ACfU3U0IO6nlWhvaA4aiUXpcc9IaZCRBLQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2vsOugNuCAxXcHzQIHTe-CvUQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=hwalloju%20koreaN%20DRINK&f=false
6. Park, H. (2021) Challenges of Modernity: The Rise of Modern Industrial Soju and the Revival of Traditional Soju. In Soju: A Global History (Asian Connections, pp. 164-199). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108895774.006