What are Korean drinking games?

In Korea the drinking table is a playground. This is the part of the culture that travels best: an exhibition visitor in Madrid or Hanoi who will not attempt a bow will happily play 007 Bbang within a minute of being shown it, because the games need no shared language.

What the games are for

Not intoxication. The games do three things: they give a group of people who may not know each other a reason to look at each other, they set a rhythm so that no one person controls the pace, and they hand out turns so that nobody is left outside the conversation. A game is a mechanism for baeryeo disguised as an excuse to drink — and every one of them works equally well when the loser drinks water.

The nine catalogued games

1. Bottoms Up (원샷)The simplest and the oldest instinct: empty the glass in one. Called out as 원샷 (wonshat), usually for a first glass or a completed toast, and never something to impose on someone else.
2. 007 Bbang (007빵)A pointing and counting game. Players fire in sequence — "zero, zero, seven, bang" — and the person shot must throw their hands up while their neighbours react. Hesitation loses.
3. APT (아파트)Everyone stacks their hands in a pile, a number is called, and the hands are pulled out one by one as the count runs. Whoever's hand is on top at the end drinks. Known worldwide since 2024, when it became the premise of a global pop single.
4. Up Down (업다운)One player fixes a secret number inside a range; the others guess, and each guess narrows the range as "up" or "down" until someone lands on it exactly. The person who lands on it drinks.
5. Spin Bottle (병뚜껑 돌리기)Played with the cap, not the bottle. The soju cap's thin metal tail is unfurled and passed around the table; each player flicks it once, and whoever finally detaches it drinks.
6. Tail Flick (꼬리치기)The same cap tail, played for accuracy rather than chance — a flicking contest where the loser is the one who misses. The tail is the reason Korean drinking games need no equipment: it comes attached to every bottle.
7. Soju Mic (소주 마이크)The empty bottle becomes a microphone and the holder has to sing. It is the shortest route from a Korean dinner table to a Korean karaoke room, and it is usually how the evening turns.
8. Wave (웨이브)A sequential motion game: each player continues the wave in turn, and whoever breaks the rhythm drinks. Physical, fast, and the easiest game to join without sharing a language.
9. Toong (통)A call-and-response counting game in the same family as 007 Bbang, played on rhythm — the loss comes from breaking the beat rather than from a wrong answer.

Two games every visitor eventually meets

Outside the catalogued set, two others are so widespread they function as common property. 3-6-9 (삼육구): count upward around the table, but clap instead of saying any number containing three, six or nine. The Noticing Game (눈치게임): players stand up one at a time calling the next number, with no order agreed in advance; if two people stand together, both lose. Neither has a known author, which is usually the sign of a game that has been played for a very long time.

How old are Korean drinking games?

At least thirteen centuries. Excavations at Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond in Gyeongju — the royal grounds of Unified Silla — recovered the Juryeonggu (주령구, 酒令具): a fourteen-sided oak die with six square and eight hexagonal faces, cut so that every face has almost exactly the same probability of landing upward. Each face carries an inscribed penalty for the player who rolls it, and the penalties are recognisably the same genre of instruction Koreans still hand out at a table tonight:

• 飮盡大笑 eumjindaeso — drain the cup and laugh out loud
• 三盞一去 samjanilgeo — three cups at once
• 禁聲作舞 geumseongjakmu — dance, but in silence
• 任意請歌 imuicheongga — call on anyone to sing

Sing on command, dance without a sound, empty the cup and laugh. A Silla aristocrat and a Seoul office worker in 2026 are, on the evidence, playing the same game. The full history is on how old Korean drinking culture is.