For a business that is revolutionizing the way Koreans regard traditional alcohol, Hangang Brewery has a decidedly low profile. The rust-brown building it inhabits sits on a drab lane leading to the northern bank of Seoul’s Han River, and with no signs outside, it takes some time to convince myself I’m in the right place.
Pressing on, I head up a dim stairwell, clambering over several boxes before nearly stumbling into a startled young man who immediately drops the crates he’s carrying and ushers me into the office of CEO and co-founder Sung Yong Koh. I say office, but it feels more like a den. And Koh, with his long hair and impeccably trimmed goatee, certainly doesn’t fit the typical Korean tycoon profile.
Nonetheless, from these unassuming premises Hangang is producing some of the capital’s, a cloudy rice wine that languished for decades at the bottom of the Korean liquor hierarchy, favored only by farmers and day laborers. With a combination of premium ingredients, painstaking production, and bold design sensibilities, Koh and his colleagues have in just three years gone from square one to producing up to 40,000 bottles a month, collaborating with some of the country’s most admired brands and convincing thousands of young people of the merits of a sorely underappreciated beverage.
