The Marmot’s Hole

The JoongAng Ilbo has a piece on the increase in wine sales in Korea, and with that a concurrent decrease in the amount of Whiskey sales. Now while there could be many factors related and unrelated to the changing statistics, such never stops a JoongAng reporter:

Wine, once enjoyed by a few rich connoisseurs here, has become widely accepted in recent years, partly because of a mega-hit Japanese comic series called “Les Gouttes de Dieu,” or “Drops from God.” The comics, about one man’s quest for the best wine, has ignited a new passion, especially among Korean businessmen with a firmly established habit of downing bottles of soju or whiskey during after-hours drinking binges.

So the reporter looks at the data and submits consumers are substituting whiskey for wine. After all he has a Japanese comic book on his side, how can anyone doubt that! (It is a little known TV fact that the best Perry Mason episodes had Japanese comic books as surprise last minute smoking-gun evidence.) However, as usual in these cases, the author gives the data for his own demise.

While the author does not make it easy to find, you can calculate that change in consumption for four types of tipple:

Whiskey: -1,000 kiloliters
Soju: +31,000 kiloliters
Beer: +42,000 kiloliters
Wine: +2,000 kiloliters

Now before you want to look at the rather impressive growth across all categories BUT whiskey, lets give the author a bit more room. In away the above is comparing apples to oranges, for example a liter of beer is much different from a liter of whiskey in both alcohol and serving size. So lets calculate:

Whiskey: -23,000 glasses (1.5oz shot glass)
Soju: +704,500 glasses (1.5oz shot glass)
Beer: +21,000 glasses (500ml mug)
Wine: +11,000 glasses (6oz serving)

Whiskey: -400 kiloliters of alcohol (40% ABV)
Soju: +6,200 kiloliters of alcohol (20% ABV)
Beer: +2,100 kiloliters of alcohol (5% ABV)
Wine: +280 kiloliters of alcohol (14% ABV)

As you can see in both cases, wine consumption only makes up for half to two-thirds the decline in whiskey. Meanwhile soju and beer record much larger increases, which also make me doubt the conclusion since one could argue soju and beer are an inferior substitution for whiskey.

Finally, since most all categories are up, and population is never a zero-sum situation, one could easily consider part of the increase in wine to be first-time rather than substituting consumers.

So what’s the point? Just another article that makes me wonder why I even bother with Korean papers. After all the real truth according to them can be found in Japanese comic books.