Jay Park, the former K-pop idol-turned-serious-rapper-turned entrepreneur was in L.A. on a recent Sunday to hang out with a few hundred people at the K-Town hot spot, Intercrew. The restaurant was transformed for one night into a hip-hop club.
“I love Los Angeles. There’s a big Korean community here. There’s a lot of my friends here and I enjoy every time I come back,” said Park.
The occasion was to celebrate Park’s latest venture. It’s not a new album, but a brand of liquor called Won Soju that Park is bringing to the U.S.
The restaurant Intercrew was turned into a club for one night.
Since launching last year in South Korea, Park’s soju has become a hot commodity in the country, selling more than 6 million bottles in the first year.
Now, the 36-year-old Korean American is setting his sights stateside. More than 100 restaurants and stores in California and several other states now carry Won Soju.
“It’s premium soju distilled [with] ingredients straight from Korea,” said Park. “It’s just water, yeast, and the finest rice from Wonju. That’s what makes it special.”
The Won Soju cocktail menu at the launch event in Los Angeles.
Soju, a condensed history
Soju is often called the national liquor of Korea. And Los Angeles is no stranger to the clear rice wine in palm-sized bottles that line the shelves of H Mart and Korean barbecue joints, thanks to its sizable diaspora. The liquor comes in grapefruit, pineapple, and other flavors, and a bottle is typically around the price of a fancy L.A. latte.
Those are what historian Hyunhee Park at The City University of New York called “industrial” soju. They are factory-made and mass-produced, and rode the Korean pop cultural wave — or Hallyu — to global popularity in the early 2000s.
“[Korea] began to export many bottles of their industrial soju to other countries, thanks to Hallyu. People watched the drama, and in the drama people enjoy soju and so they became really popular,” said Park, who is author of the book, Soju: A Global History. “It’s industrial soju that made Korean soju a global brand.”
Park said Korea started mass-producing the liquor in earnest after Japanese occupation ended in the country in 1945. War-torn Korea was so impoverished that it banned the use of rice — the primary ingredient — to make soju.
And distillers turned to cheaper alternatives, like sweet potatoes and tapioca.
“They developed these huge factories where they make very strong spirit — 95% of [it was] ethanol. And then they mix it with water to dilute it,” Park said.
It’s a marked difference from how traditional soju was made, using a method of distillation that took hold in Korea about a century ago. The process was slower, lengthier, leading to a product that is smoother and higher in alcohol content — all by using the simplest ingredients.
Or in Jay Park the rapper’s words, “just water, yeast, and the finest rice.”
A crowded marketplace
Jay Park’s Won Soju isn’t the only brand that hearkens back to the traditional way of production. There’s also Andong and Hwayo among a small field of premium soju distillers. There are also the many kinds of industrial soju the world has come to know and love.
But Park is not fazed.
“The market is not saturated though. I’m the only person with the soju. I’m the first. I made history. I’m the first of my kind. It’s a new market,” Park said, speaking like a bona fide rap star.
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