The past decade has seen high-risk drinking rates fall among Korean men of all age groups, while women over the age of 30 are actually drinking more, according to new data released by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
For men, the findings define high-risk drinking as seven or more shots of soju or five or more cans of beer in a single sitting, whereas for women, the threshold is five or more shots of soju or three or more cans of beer.
The research is based on the 2025 Community Health Survey, an annual poll which queries around 230,000 adults aged 13 and older to gauge information about health and chronic disease.
The data showed that more than half (57.1%) of Korean adults drank at least once a month, while 33.7% binge drank and 12% engaged in high-risk drinking.
However, drinking habits sharply differed by age and gender.
Half of Korean men binge drink, says study
Between 2016 and 2025, the high-risk drinking rate dropped across all age groups for men, from those in their 20s to those 70 and older.
In the same time period, the high-risk drinking rate shot up in every age group for women, with the exception of those in their 20s.
Despite this, men still outpaced women on every indicator, with middle-aged men in particular prone to problematic drinking. Half of men in their 30s, 40s and 50s binge drank and more than one in five in their 40s and 50s engaged in high-risk drinking.
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Among women, binge drinking peaked among those in their 20s at 34.2%, followed by those in their 30s at 26.6%.
As judged by SBS News, the rise in older women’s drinking rates may have been driven by the expansion of social activities for women including dining out and gatherings, the diversification of drinking methods, with drinking alone and at home now more common, as well as changes in the social perception of women’s drinking.
What about people drinking less?
And while these statistics point to a prevalence in harmful drinking behaviours, an alternative movement is seeing young Koreans get curious about sobriety, with non-alcoholic beer spending rising by almost a third over the past three years, the drinks business previously reported.
This might explain why it’s only among women aged 30+ that drinking rates have climbed up.
South Korea’s household alcohol spend saw its sharpest sharpest drop in seven years in the first quarter of this year, with more than half of Korea’s pubs vanishing over the past eight years, thanks to elevated operating costs, and the fall of after-work drinks gatherings – no longer the corporate tradition they once were.
Shipments of diluted soju, South Korea’s best-known spirit, also fell by 13.4% between 2019 and 2025, according to the National Tax Service. Volumes declined from 916,000 kilolitres to 793,000 kilolitres over the six-year period.
Although shipments briefly recovered in 2022 as Covid restrictions eased, rising 4.3% year-on-year to 862,000 kilolitres, the broader downward trend has continued, pointing to a broader national shift in drinking habits.
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