Guide to pojangmacha: Why Koreans love drinking in tents

Thu, 03/22/2012 - 23:00 — Anonymous by Esther Oh , Frances Cha, Seoul
EditorIt's a typical Wednesday night at Hanshin Pocha -– a street bar
with a plastic tarp for a wall in the trendy Hongdae district. The plastic
stools are uncomfortable, the bathroom is repulsive, half the customers are
chain-smoking and the noise level is slightly below rock concert level, but
all the tables are full and people are lining up to get in. And it's only 8
p.m. While every table starts out single-sex, by the end of the night the
boundaries have blurred, as the guys approach the girls' tables with
pick-up lines that range from asking for shots to claiming they lost a
drinking game and had to go chat up a girl.  "We're famous for our
chicken feet (닭발) and 'booking'," says Choi Sung-wook, the manager,
referring to the Korean term for groups of men foraging for groups of women
and vice versa. "Our waiters don't facilitate the 'booking' -- the
customers just do it themselves."read more