Market Analysis on South Korean Soju
An in depth, opinion and researched analysis of the worlds most popular alcoholic drink and South Korea’s national beverage of choice - Soju.
Soju has long been east Asia’s tipple of choice. Dominating drink sales and even experiencing record breaking growth in a year when every other alcohol led producer plummeted. So how do they do it? And why if it’s so popular do we in the western world still know so little about it? Here’s my analysis of the market and my opinionated forecast for the future of Soju.
It’s worth noting before we get in to this analysis, if you don’t know much at all about Soju, then do check out my full westerners guide on the stuff to learn exactly what it is, how it’s made, and the historical timeline of Soju’s rise to fame.
Just how big is Soju?
The world's dominating brand of Soju is ‘HiteJinro’, which was founded in 1924. Soju itself makes up 97% of alcohol sales in South Korea and half of all the white spirits sold in South Korea is produced by non-other than Jinro.
Jinro have quite the variety of Soju flavours from there classic Chamisul, plum and even pineapple. For almost 20 years they have been the major player in Soju’s rise to global domination.
Just to put the scale of Soju sales into global perspective, the world's leading brand Jinro, has held the number 1 spot on the ‘Millionaires’ Club' list of top selling spirits and alcohol’ for 20 years in a row.
The Millionaires’ Club FYI is an annual list published by the renowned global drinks journal, Drinks International, which features international spirits brands that sell over 1 million 9-liter cases on a yearly basis.
In 2020, Jinro sold around 95.3 million Soju cases, almost threefold the amount sold by the world’s No. 2 distilled spirit brand, Philippines’ Ginebra, which sold around 31.2 million cases.
How much Soju is sold historically?
Here’s a summary of just how much HiteJinro dominates the market and just how much growth they have had over the past 10 years. Keep in mind, each count is for 9 Litre cases and Jinro Soju sits in 360ml bottles. So each count of 1, is actually for 25 bottles of Soju…
2011: 61.4 million
2012: 65.3 million
2013: 66.5 million
2014: 71 million
2015: 73.5 million
2016: 73.9 million
2017: 76.8 million
2018: 78 million
2019: 86.3 million
2020: 95.3 million
Putting those sales into global perspective
Photos and data sourced from the Korea Economic Daily.
Key points from Soju sales data
Jinro alone has dominated the sales of alcohol for the last 20 years and as the years go on, the gap between them and other alcohol producers gets larger and larger.
In 2020 Jinro recorded their largest sales and their largest growth with a 9.5% increase.
In that same year of 2020, the spirits business reported a 15.8 billion litre decrease in alcohol sales. That’s a 6% decline from the previous year, said to be caused by Covid-19.
That means that whilst the world of alcohol plummeted and all round producers had to fight with a massive decrease in sales, at the same time, Jinro was experiencing their largest growth to date.
Where is Soju making its money?
With Soju being South Korean, and already mentioning that Soju in South Korea makes up 97% of the market. It’s a fair assumption that the main sales of Soju are taking place in South Korea.
However, do those numbers add up? The population of South Korea as of 2020 is reported as 51.78 million. How many drinkers make up that population? Discarding children and likewise people who don’t drink, sure, its still a lot of people. But 95.3 million 9 litre cases sold in a year? That can not be right. And we know its not the UK or USA making up a large part of that. So where are the sales coming from? Lets take a closer look…
What does the future of Soju look like
In short, bright.
Soju has been around for a very long time, (which you will know from my Soju guide) successfully dominating not just the Asian alcohol market, but the global alcohol market. However, the key players in global domination are the western world. In particular, Europe. A 2019 report on the top 10 countries that consume the highest amounts of alcohol per capita reported by the World Health Organisation list 9 out of the 10 being European countries.
That report list the top 10 as follows, listed as rank, country and litres of pure alcohol per capita…
#1 | Czechia | 14.3
#2 | Latvia | 13.2
#3 | Moldova | 12.9
#4 | Germany | 12.8
#5 | Lithuania | 12.8
#6 | Ireland | 12.7
#7 | Spain | 12.7
#8 | Bulgaria | 12.5
#9 | Uganda | 12.5
#10 | Luxembourg |12.4
Now if we go back to that Soju sales report made in 2020 by the Korean Economic Daily.
We can see that each unit is a million USD, and only 1.6 of those sales were made in those countries listed as highest consuming. Not surprising, they market themselves pretty close to Korea, which is why the surrounding countries like China and Japan have such high yields. But if they could market themselves as well to a European market, the potential for growth is massive. In-fact they could easily double there market share which is crazy numbers. They already make crazy numbers, but it would be even crazier.
So why haven’t they done it?
Simply put, Soju is a product that is designed for the taste of Koreans. It does well in other surrounding east Asian countries because flavours, production techniques and tastes are similar. Us western world dwellers have different tastes. Not to mention Korea has been exporting to those countries long before any other.
Just because it’s so popular in East Asia, does not mean it would be popular in Europe where they already have an established drinking culture built around such different products like beer, wine and botanical distilled spirits.
Why could it work
With all that being said, the western world has been going through a East Asia lust for the last couple of years, more and more so, a South Korean Craze. Countries like France, America and Italy have gone through these periods where they have been the global trend setters. Italy and French foods being enjoyed globally, restaurants and bars opening in every town, tourism through the roof. With that has seen typical products from those countries skyrocketing.
Hallyu - The Korean Wave
Korean Wave: Image source
In fact, they have a name for this Korean Craze, it’s Hallyu, a Chinese term meaning, ‘The Korean Wave’. Which refers to the global popularity of South Korea’s cultural economy exporting pop culture, entertainment, music, TV dramas and movies.
With this Korean wave, it's already set them up as the new trend setting country. It seems like everyone in the western world is suddenly going mad for South Korea. It started with K-POP. Who remembers a few years back when Korean pop started dominating Youtube with the likes of PSY? whom by the way, is an ambassador for Soju.
Psy’s partnership with Jinro Soju: Image source.
Just when we thought it was the end of a trend, in came BTS, who are now the most popular boy band there ever have been. They have a hugely dedicated fan base with over 58.4 millions Instagram followers. Its also worth noting that BTS 'huge fan base massively resides within the western world.
And its not just music South Korea is dominating, South Korean fashion, youtubers and influencers are getting more and more popular and then there’s T.V and film. In 2020 records were broken when the most sought after award at the Oscars best picture was awarded to a non-English speaking film, that film? Parasite, a South-Korean movie which also took home best director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Film awards. It’s the first film to win both the Best Picture and the newly-named, Best International Film Oscars category
Least we not forget 2021. The most watched show on Netflix broke records, not just for being the most watched show in 2021, but for being the most watched thing ever on Netflix AND for being a non-English show. And that series was? Squid Game, a South-Korean series. Third on that list of ‘most watched ever’ was the Witcher with 76 million households watching, Second was Bridgeton with 82 million, and Squid Game? That got 142 million households watching! That’s 60 millions more than the next closest. It’s crazy.
So with all that happening it’s safe to say that South-Korea is taking over and doing bloody well here in the western world. Smashing records in every western category from the Oscars, to Netflix, to Youtuber views and boy bands. It’s only a matter of time before Soju has the opportunity to grow even more. Especially once the world re opens. I suspect South Korean tourism to increase even more, giving people the opportunity to discover Soju in a natural way, and the more people from the western world get a taste of it and begin to understand it, the more popular it’s going to be over here.
To learn more about what exactly Soju is and how it’s made, check out my full 101 Soju guide here.
So what are your opinions on Soju? Where do you see the market going? Let me know what you think of the industry below.
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