Korean people are known as diligent workers for economic development. The international attention to Korea when Hyundai’s car was exported to the US, people’s focus was on overloaded workload by Korean workers. It is true in Korean point of view too, because in President Park’s era many labourers sufferred longer work hours and difficult and dangerous work conditions. So, there are many holidays and many kind of leisure cultures are available for Korean cultures, it is notable topic for manipulation of many other issues at understanding Korean leisure cultures.
The traditional phrases 음주가무(飮酒歌舞, drinking, singing and dancing) is paramount for Korean people’s leisure time cultures. People meet at restaurant, selling 삼겹살(pork belly meat grilled at table top) and order 소주 or 맥주, eating and exchange conversation about how they live life. When they finished eating well, move to other restaurants, to have another dose of alchohol, which is so-called 이차, 삼차, 사차 and so on. (이차 is second time, 삼차 is third time, 사차 is forth time in Korean speaking)
The alchohols Korean people drink daily are several kinds. The most popular is 소주. 소주 is made of rice, transparent color looks like plain water. It is alchoholic beverage, but not too strong dosage. 소주 is sometimes mixed with beer, to make 폭탄주 (bomb alchohol) and 원샷 (drinking at once) are what Korean people often do for cultivating the mood. The other specialities are 막걸리 or 복분자주, the latter 복분자주 is what I would like to recommend of its special taste for. There is also one of the popular alchohol so-called 백세주. 백세 means centenarian, 주 is wine. It is narrative when people drink it, they live upto 100 years of age. No one believes it, but 백세주, has narrative behind its origin, and tastes has aroma compared to soju, so is popular alchohol recent 30 years from its early production.
If the restaurant visit is complete and fed up, people continue their leisure time at the noraebang, the facility offerring karaoke machines, where singing is performed by people, which is symbolic scene in Korean leisure cultures. People sing in noraebang often shout high pitch sound which is noisy, but no one interrupts it and no one complains it, because everyone at the place are all together having same way to do it, which is how 음주가무 is originally ongoing. In the West, people tend to avoid singing when they do not have definite talent, but Korean people are different, when they are not professional singers, they sing at noraebang bravely, it is funny look everyone enjoyed. The stress relieve is possible by this participation. Shouting and catharsis.
The leisure time thusfar introduced is for adults only. Teenagers go to PC bang which is cybercafe, play e-sports games, such as starcraft, PC bang is very modernized center for gamers, recent spec of PCs are located, and even they sell culinary menu delivered to the visitors’s desk. Teenagers play games overnight when weekend comes up, and many teenagers entertained soaring spirit of young mind there.
Some people like to do shopping at dongdaemoon market. Korean commodities especially apparel are very great quality. People who came to Korean market agree design and its finish are A-grade. So, if you are travellers at Seoul city, dongdaemoon market is one of the place where you can do one stop shopping for quality commodities. They sell not only apparel, but they also sell electronics, and foods too.
There are more places such as 이태원, where US soldiers and international people’s welcomed place, if you have time to be everywhere in Seoul, one of the place to go. Insadong is also good place to go, traditional products are sold, even used book stores.
Korean people have many national holidays. Korean people were working 6 days a week, they also worked at Saturdays even though until 12 p.m. Now they work 5 days a week as other well-developed countries, it is still true that they are diligent, so leisure cultures are developed well. In detail, they have unique sense of enjoyment of it, woori cultures on han and heung attribution, which means we (woori) resolve han (恨) with pure sense of heung (興), in a way of 飮酒歌舞. It is particular way of Korean people continue to, interesting phenomena to understand modern Korean people. So is this writing.
I tell more about Insadong is good video creation, in this video, used book stores are now closed their business due to widespread of ebook market, so I mentioned here to more accurate knowledge. If you need to go to used book stores, please find Aladin used book stores. (https://www.aladin.co.kr may have link for question)