TEA FOR ONE
Eating lunch alone or having a quiet beer at home on the couch doesn’t strike most Westerners as out of the ordinary but in South Korea, a ｃountry whose culture is more oriented toward group affiliation, something as simple as having a sandwich at your desk could mark you as anti-social or an object of pity: the dreaded wangtta, or social outcast, doomed to a life of solitary meals and other lonely pursuits.
This stigma on eating and drinking alone however is rapidly changing, as a few recent articles note. In the past year or so, restaurants have embraced solo diners, and a new word, honbap (a compound derived from the words for “alone” (honja) and “rice” (bap)), has thus entered the Korean lexicon. Likewise, drinking alone no longer marks you as a bum or an alcoholic, but merely a practitioner of honsul (“alone” plus “alcohol” (sul)), which has a decidedly more sympathetic ring.
As many observers have pointed out, the changes in dining habits are driven in part by the rise in single households, which now acｃount for over one-quarter of Korean households – a significant social shift that has been playing out over the past few years as property values rise while economic uncertainty and changing personal priorities impels more young people to delay or forgo marriage.
The rise in solo living arrangements may also be having other interesting effects on consumption trends. A recent article traces a the rise in the number of convenience stores to the same single-living trend, noting that many people who live alone simply find it easier to procure most of their daily needs at a CU Mart than at a larger store, which tend to deal in larger quantities and sizes.
On a personal level, I have noticed a steep ｄrop in the looks of pity I used to receive from Korean students and friends whenever I was sighted sipping a coffee or scarfing down a sandwich by myself. Now it appears that I was just a man ahead of his time. Who knew?
Article Source: https://bosmosis.wordpress.com/tag/honsul/
Image Source: https://cartoonsbydouglasorleski.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/drinking-alone.png?w=640&h=836
VOCABULARY WORDS:
1. strike (v.) - to enter the mind of occur to
2. oriented (v.) - adjusted with relation to, or brought into due relation to surroundings, circumstances, facts, etc
3. affiliation (n.) - the state or process of affiliating or being affiliated
4. anti-social (adj.) - not sociable not wanting the company of others
5. pursuit (n.) - an activity of a specified kind, especially a recreational or athletic one
6. stigma (n.) - a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person
7. lexicon (n.) - the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge
8. bum (n.) - a vagrant
9. practitioner (n.) - a person actively engaged in an art, discipline, or profession
10. forgo (v.) - omit or decline to take (something pleasant or valuable) go without
11. scarfing (v. slang) - to eat, especially voraciously (often followed by down or up)
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. What do you think about people who eat or drink alone (in restaurants, pubs, etc)?
2. Do you eat or drink alone?
- If yes: When do you drink alone? When do you eat alone? What do you think about when you drink or eat alone?
- If not: Why don’t you drink or eat alone? Have you thought of drinking or eating alone? What would make you eat and drink alone?
3. Why are there many who drink and eat alone in Korea nowadays?
