By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
You know those soju drunks you often see sprawled out on the ground, who you want to poke with a stick to see if they’re still breathing?
Well, guess what! By 2007, it may be Miller time at the pojang macha.
The price of soju or traditional distilled liquor will go up 12.12 percent for the next two years, while the price of beer will fall 5.97 percent in 2006 and 10.74 percent in 2007. As a result, the manufacturer??s price of soju and beer will stand at W897 for both in 2007, with retail prices also similar.
Tax on soju, known as the working man??s tipple, already rose from 35 percent to 72 percent in 2000. If it goes up to 90 percent next year, it will have nearly tripled over six years and is therefore likely to incur an intemperate response from ordinary drinkers and the industry.
This bit, however, makes you wonder if the liquid courage that has fueled so many “Sexy Dance Contests” may be too expensive to bother with in the future:
The price of whisky will also surge next year as the government plans to hike tax from 72 percent to 90 percent, the same level as soju. The price of a 500 ml bottle of Imperial whisky will likely to go up from W25,000 to W29,000 or 30,000. That in turn will lead bars or pubs, which account for over 80 percent of the total sales of whisky, to put up their selling price by W20,000 to W30,000.
Writer’s Note: A link to the original story was added to this post after it was originally published.
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17 Comments
Where did this story come from? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, that last paragraph. If bars “put up their selling price by W20,000 to W30,000,” is this a range? Also, Miller beer, which sucks ass by the way, is more than 2,000 won a bottle in Family Mart, so it’s hardly a bargain for the non-discerning drunk in Korea–but maybe it’s another of your non sequiturs.
Here’s the Korea I know:
http://www.iht.com/articles/20...../drink.php
This part slays me:
Bomb drinks have their die-hard supporters. Hwang Chang Kyu, president of the semiconductor division of Samsung Electronics, was once quoted as saying that the key to Samsung’s triumph over Japanese competitors had a lot to do with the drinking culture of Korean office workers, if not with the bomb itself.
“Unlike Japanese workers who are said to go home right after work, South Korean workers come up with various excuses to go and have a few bombs,” he reportedly said a few years ago. “Without the bomb drink, I don’t think we could have built the teamwork we have. And it’s not an exaggeration to say that we used our teamwork to offset disadvantages we had against the Japanese.”
Sure Mr. Hwang
It’s very interesting how determined the Roh gang is to destroy this country’s economy. Who, in this day and age, prescribes higher taxes for a slowing economy? If Korea wants to be a “financial hub”, how does abolition of Korea’s network of tax treaties and the harassment of foreign capital further that end? How on Earth does “public ownership of land” and control of housing prices advance the public good — for most citizens, their home is the sole store of wealth.
The hike in taxes on ?????? stems mainly from a trade dispute between booze-producing countries [the EU and the US] and Korea. The taxes on alcohol are stiff, but vary depending on what your poison is. Taxes on wines are maginally cheaper than cognac and whiskey, whereas taxes on beer are sky-high [120% was it?]. One of the moves made by the KDJ government, in response to yet another protest by the EU and others, to reduce slightly the tax rates on all categories of booze, and hike those on soju to the same level of its foreign “equivalents”, so that foreigners couldn’t complain about unfairness. The fact that a bottle of all-chemical soju costs a few hundred won to produce whereas a bottle of cognac or whiskey, even cheap, cost maginally more, didn’t enter the equation apparently. On top of that, of course, imported booze is subject to more taxes than their local equivalent, if any. Chilean wine has much lower taxes [if think the ????? is 10%], thanks to the FTA. And surprise, surprise, imports of Chilean wine have doubled… Maybe it’s not Miller time, but Chateau Los Boldos time in ???????????…
There’s a current FTA going on with Japan now as we speak. Should be concluded soon. Could we eventually add sake to the list as well then?
http://landofsoju.netfirms.com/soju.htm
A big wopping tax increase on soju is an excellent ideal. It’s bad for consumption in the short term, but it will reduce the side effects of cheap liquor like alcoholism that destroy families. It will also reduce businesses for hostess bars and room salons. And hopefully it will also reduce public drunkeness, puking, and peeing in public streets. The tax will alleviate some of the public disorderliness and bring about some semblence of sobriety to a society which thinks drinking until you’re unconcious is cool. It’s a good ideal to hit the consumers of cheqp liquor in the pocket books.
I added the link that I forgot.
As for the Miller time bit — it wasn’t meant to be taken absolutely literally. I felt from the light hearted way it was written that that was pretty obvious.
Only a extremely anal-retentive newspaper copy editor wouldn’t let such a comment slide. Grin.
You have no idea how close that remark hit to home…. It’s Journalism 101 that a headline and lede should have some logical connection to the rest of the article. Granted Marmot’s is not a newspaper, but when you make readers reach for a connection (which IMHO you failed to establish, even “lightheartedly”) you’re doing them a disservice. Look at the title of the post below–Marmot’s deadpan humor shines through, and his lede (the opening paragraph) coalesces nicely with it. It did give me a chuckle, though–”anal-retentive newspaper copy editor,” that’s an oxymoron.
http://www.testycopyeditors.org/phpBB2/
I disagree.
1. As you mentioned, The Marmot’s Hole is not a newspaper. And it’s definitely not some sort of J-School hazing exercise where the guy from The Paper Chase makes me feel like playing in traffic because I forgot to staple my term paper with two staples not one.[I am aware that The Paper Chase is about law school, not J-School, but that would be...what...a joke! Was it thought out enough? I don't know. You tell me.]
1.a I am aware that newspaper copy editors are anal.
2. I feel Marmot’s Hole readers are smart enough and clued-in enough that they could make the light-hearted - if somewhat tenuous - connection between the increased tax and the fact that a soju drunk might head for a bar instead because beer and soju will be the same price. And I am aware that at most soju tents (in my experience) sell only soju , but as I mentioned, that’s…uh…a joke.
The post was supposed to produce a chuckle — “Ha, ha, the soju drunks are going to drink beer now instead of soju!”
Therefore, it goes beyond the pale to say that I am doing a horrible disservice to readers by being a bit humorous by not being absolutely 100 percent literal in what I wrote. The point of the post is I thought it was funny and I was making a joke. I greatly respect The Marmot’s writing, but I feel what you’re noticing is simply a difference in our sense of humor.
Given what you’ve said, however, I will make every effort to drain any and every humorous element from my posts so if you get upset it will be because of a factual inaccuracy, not that you didn’t get a joke that I made.
I honestly don’t know what more I can do.
Geez, some of y’all are tight with the rules. I guess I’ll have to be careful with the guest posts I do if I want to avoid censure.
The only problem I can see with the headline is that only Americans would understand the joke.
(For non-Americans out there the expression “It’s Miller time” came from beer commercials a few years or decades ago. It has become a common expression in American English.)
…it might also get a few people who see your byline and automatically skip over it to stop and read.
Ouch! Direct hit. And this guy asked “what more [he] can do”. Hey Shelton — have you thought about polluting just your own, untrafficked blogs?
Actually, I have no qualms about Mr. Bumgarner contributing–it’s the Marmot’s call, it’s his blog and a certain division of labor is at play, I guess. All I meant was he seems to think “Miller Time” signifies “funny allusion,” whereas to me it means outdated, misleading reference. Since I have to edit Korean Babelfish-esque attempts at English all day, my fuse for language abuse is getting shorter all the time, but maybe in this instance I was a little harsh.
Fer Christ’s sake man, chill out…your headings usually have an oblique reference to your posts, and some readers (OK, me) find it annoying–not to pull rank on you, because I’ve been a published writer for more than 20 years, including about five as a journalist. Aside from that, your writing is fine. And I was thinking, as Andy pointed out, that the connotations of a really old American commercial jingle would be lost on the many non-Americans who read this blog. Know your audience. It might be “anal,” but it might also get a few people who see your byline and automatically skip over it to stop and read.
OK, just to be clear on this, I assume that my using a headline such as “Hey Roh, where’s the beef?” would be right out.
How about “Yo Chung Dong-young, What’s Upppppp!!!” or “Kim Jong-il, I love you man.”?
As for a division of labor, I wasn’t made aware of one when I signed up as a guest blogger but there is a kind of ‘organic’ division based on our different interests and world views. From what I have read, I gather that Shelton is a center-left kind of guy. If any of you have read my blog, you would know that I am basically a red meat conservative. That puts the Marmot comfortably in the middle as the hard-boiled realist of the bunch.
Other than that, the only thing I do is make sure that Shelton or the Marmot haven’t already covered a subject before I post on it.
So, why are the taxes going up?
hardandtiny, the taxes are going up to fuel the pinko machine we affectingly call the ROK government. The only way for the ROK government to survive its current behaviors is to bilk more funds from the public. Just imagine if the ROK had a modern accounting method to catch the tax cheaters, the salary man could get a bit of a break.