Daniel Dae Kim, the actor, is walking Jimmy Fallon through the finer points of somaek, a popular Korean drink that mixes beer with the spirit soju. “Like a boilermaker,” Kim says on The Tonight Show, where he’s promoting his CNN series K-Everything. As with most drinking cultures around the world, there are rules. The youngest person should pour, though Kim, 58, takes up the job on Fallon’s behalf.

He perches a pair of Korean flat metal chopsticks in parallel lines over a half-full beer glass; the shot glass of clear soju rests on top. What happens next is fast: They slam the table in unison, and the vibrations send the shot into the beer. They grab their glasses, clink, shout the Korean cheers, “Geonbae!,” and down ’em in one. It’s a soju bomb, featuring a tall bottle of Terra beer and a sky blue bottle of Jinro soju.

For the Korean alcohol heavyweight HiteJinro, which owns both brands, the scene was a moment of pure, earned-media bliss. Kim had summed up in a few minutes what makes Jinro—a brand that’s ubiquitous in Korea and increasingly recognizable here—the world’s top-selling spirit brand by volume: the communal ritual of sharing a bottle.

S. has been on a steady decline amid changing consumer habits and rising inflation. S. adults who report drinking alcohol dropped from 62% in 2023 to 54% last year. But soju—typically made by fermenting rice into wine and then distilling it into a clear, neutral-flavored spirit—is a bright spot for the industry.

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