Korean Drank Average 5 Bottles of Soju A Month

A research shows that 1 Korean person drank 5 bottles of Soju each month in the first half of the year.

According to KALIA on July 29, 10 alcoholic beverage manufacturers including Jinro and Doosan sold totally the boxes of 45,903,185(on the basis of 30 bottles of 360㎖) in Korea for the first half of the year.

The daily average 7,608,263 bottles were consumed, and so 1 person drinks 4.9 bottles of Soju each month.

Including exports, the sales volume of Soju decreased by 3.9% to 49,801,332 boxes compared to 51,807,876 boxes of the last year. Including the exports, the total boxes of 100,994,465 were sold for one year, increased by 12.2% over the last year for sales volume.

Ranked first in Soju business, Jinro sold 26,324,908 boxes of Soju for the first half of the year and occupied 52.9% of the whole market. However, the sales volume decreased by 4.7% compared to the volume of the first half of the last year (27,637,333 boxes).

Focused on Daegu and Gyeongbuk, KUMBOKJU ranked second in the Soju business selling the 4,783,784 boxes for the first half of the year (9.6% of market share). Its sales volume decreased by 4.2% compared to the same period of the last year (4,993,146 boxes).

Besides, DOOSAN sold 4,720,802 boxes (9.5% of market share), an increase by 17.5% compared to the same period of the last year (4,017,848 boxes) owing to a rapid growth of the export.

For the first half of the year, the exports volume of DOOSAN increased by 27.9% to 1,517,553 boxes from 1,186,961 boxes of the first half of the last year. For the same period, the exports volume of JINRO decreased by 21% to 2,063,260 boxes from 2,613,396 boxes.

Chi-Young Shin higgledy@donga.com