There used to be a lot of hoesik in Korea. I mean a lot: team dinners, department dinners, a dinner because a project started and another because it finished. Two or three in a week wasn't rare. These days there are clearly fewer, as more people guard their evenings and their own time, and honestly that's fine. But December is still December.
If you work or study in Korea, you'll hear a geonbaesa (건배사), the short toast someone is asked to give before everyone drinks, and you'll hear the most of them at a 송년회 (songnyeonhoe), the year-end get-together. Hoesik (회식) just means a company meal. What happens around the meal is the part worth knowing before your first one.
How a year-end hoesik night usually runs
Every team is different, and plenty of them now do a lunch or a single round. But a classic evening hoesik still tends to follow this shape.
- 6:30 p.m.Round one, 1차 (ilcha), at a grill restaurant or a raw-fish place someone booked weeks ago. Junior staff drift toward the seats near the door and, somehow, the tongs.
- 6:45 p.m.The most senior person gives the first toast. It usually ends with "Wihayeo!" ("To ...!"), and the table shouts it back.
- 7:30 p.m.Pouring settles into a rhythm. You fill other people's glasses, not your own, and only once a glass is empty.
- 8:30 p.m.The toast goes around the table. Each person gets called on for a line or two. This is the moment a prepared geonbaesa pays off.
- 9:00 p.m.Round two, 2차 (icha): beer somewhere nearby. This is the natural, no-hard-feelings point to say goodnight.
- 10:30 p.m.Some groups carry on to a third round, often a noraebang. Many don't anymore.
- 11:00 p.m.Phones come out for designated drivers and the last subway.
- Next dayA short thank-you message to whoever organized or paid is a nice touch.
Why there are fewer of them now
I've watched the number of company dinners shrink, and the surveys back up the feeling. In an Incruit survey of 888 workers in December 2025, 69.7% said their workplace was holding a year-end party, and among them 69.8% said attendance was up to them (83.3% at large companies, 62.8% at small and mid-sized ones). Of the 30.3% with no party, most said their company had simply never had that culture.
Ask whether a year-end party is even necessary, and the answer splits by age. Overall 58.8% said yes. In their 20s it was 47.5%; in their 50s and up, 68.9%. The ones who said no mostly gave one reason: it eats their personal time (52.2%). And look at what each group wants, in the chart below. Younger staff picture a team meal during working hours, food only. Older staff still picture an evening with drinks. You can guess which version gets planned when the 50-something manager books the restaurant.
Who still wants the year-end party, by age (Incruit survey, December 2025). Chart: A Korean's Take (CC BY 4.0), free to reuse with credit.
The law moved too. Since July 16, 2019, the Labor Standards Act has banned workplace harassment, and the labor ministry's own list of examples includes forcing someone to drink, smoke or join a hoesik against their will. Old habits like 후래자 삼배 (huraeja sambae), making the latecomer down three glasses in a row, were exactly the kind of thing people pointed to when the law arrived. An employer who harasses staff can now be fined up to 10 million won. Nobody is going to sue over an awkward toast, but the days of "the boss says one more bottle, so one more bottle" are fading.
Pouring and drinking: the two rules that matter
First, the glass. In Korea you pour for someone when their glass is completely empty, not before. In Japan, people keep topping up a glass the moment it drops even a little. Korea doesn't. The National Institute of Korean History's history site describes the same contrast: hosts in China and Japan keep adding to a glass, while Koreans wait until it's empty. One reason it feels odd to many Koreans is that topping up a glass (첨잔, cheomjan) belongs to the ancestral-rite table, as the Hankook Ilbo once explained, not to a dinner with your coworkers.
That rule has a useful side effect. If you want to slow down, just leave some in your glass. Nobody can refill a glass that isn't empty, so a half-full glass is a polite way of saying "I'm fine for now." Pour and receive with two hands, or one hand touching your other wrist, when it's someone senior.
Second, the head turn. When you drink in front of someone older or more senior, turn your head slightly to the side, away from them. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes the old form of this: turning the body and covering the glass when drinking before elders. In a modern hoesik it's a small sideways turn, not a full spin. Not drinking at all is fine. Say you can't drink (술을 못 마셔요, sureul mot masyeoyo), fill your glass with cider or water, and raise it with everyone else.
The toasts: what wihayeo, cheongbaji and the rest mean
"Wihayeo!" is the default, and it works for everything. But a lot of Korean toasts are acronyms: the leader shouts a word, and each syllable stands for a phrase. They're corny on purpose, and that's the fun. Several have more than one version floating around, so here are the readings that show up most often in Korean news coverage.
| Short for | Roughly | |
|---|---|---|
| 위하여 | Not an acronym: "for the sake of" | "To us!" (or to whatever the speaker names) |
| 청바지 | 청춘은 바로 지금부터 | "Our youth starts right now" |
| 사이다 | 사랑하자 이 세상 다 바쳐 (one common version) | "Let's love with everything we've got" |
| 이멤버 | Leader: "이멤버!" All: "리멤버!" | "Remember this group of people" |
| 당나귀 | 당신과 나의 귀한 만남을 위하여 | "To this precious meeting of you and me" |
| 진달래 | 진하고 달콤한 내일을 위하여 | "To a rich, sweet tomorrow" |
| 119 | One kind of drink, one round, home by 9 | A toast that is also a promise |
Cheongbaji (청바지) literally means "blue jeans", which is half the joke. Saida (사이다) is also the word for lemon-lime soda, so it gets a laugh at a table where half the glasses hold cider. Imember-rimember is a call-and-response, so it's an easy one to lead: you shout "Imember!", the room shouts "Rimember!", and you've done your part. Korean coverage of year-end toasts lists most of these, and SBS reported a drinks maker's staff survey naming jindallae a favorite.
If you're a foreigner working in Korea and you walk in with a toast ready, you've already won the evening. It doesn't have to be clever. Three syllables in Korean, said with a straight face, will get more goodwill than any speech.
When the night goes wrong
Driving is the big one. Korea's drunk-driving line has been a blood alcohol concentration of 0.03% since June 2019, which is stricter than many countries, and it applies the next morning too. Police counted 10,351 drunk-driving crashes and 121 deaths in 2025, down from 206 deaths in 2021. That's why the designated driver, 대리운전 (daeri unjeon), is part of hoesik culture: you call a driver through an app and they drive you home in your own car. Kakao Mobility's 2019 data found 66% of its designated-driver calls came between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m., and after the limit dropped to 0.03%, calls between 7 and 9 a.m. jumped 77%. People had started worrying about the morning after, which is the right instinct.
Then there's the odd legal question of whether a hoesik counts as work. Korean courts look at whether the company organized and controlled the event and whether the drinking was pressed on people. In a 2015 case, the Supreme Court refused to call a fall at a second round an industrial accident because the worker had kept drinking well past what the event involved, by his own choice. In 2017, it did recognize a fall on the stairs of a second-round bar. The takeaway for a guest at a hoesik is simple enough: an official company dinner is treated as part of work, and "I chose to keep going" is treated as your own business.
One last rule if your year-end dinner involves outsiders. Under the anti-graft law, meals offered to public officials, journalists or teachers have a per-person cap, and it rose from 30,000 to 50,000 won on August 27, 2024. It's the reason a client dinner with a government official can feel strangely budget-conscious.
Quick answers
Do I have to go to hoesik? Usually it's not compulsory, and pressuring someone to attend against their will counts as workplace harassment under the labor ministry's guidance. Going to round one and leaving after round two is the easy middle path.
What if I don't drink alcohol? Say so once, fill your glass with cider or water, and join every toast anyway. Leaving your glass full also stops refills.
What is songnyeonhoe? A year-end gathering (송년회), held by companies, alumni groups and friends in December. The January version is 신년회 (sinnyeonhoe), the new-year gathering.
What's an easy Korean toast for a foreigner? "Wihayeo!" for safety, or a call-and-response like "Imember!" "Rimember!", which only needs you to shout one word.
More from this blog
- Have You Eaten in Korean? What Bap Meogeosseoyo Really Means
- Why Korean Restaurants Require 2 Servings (and Are Banchan Really Free?)
What toast would you bring to your first Korean hoesik?
Top photo: charcoal glowing in a table grill at a Korean barbecue restaurant in Seoul. Photo: lee seunghyub / Unsplash, cropped
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