회식: the Korean team dinner you 'can' skip (but should you?)

It’s 4:47 p.m. on a Thursday. Your team leader stands up, stretches the way people do when they’re about to say something they’ve been planning all afternoon, and says to nobody in particular:

“오늘 다들 시간 괜찮지? 간단하게 회식이나 하자.” (“Everyone’s free tonight, right? Let’s just do a quick team dinner.”)

Nobody says yes. Nobody says no. Somewhere a KakaoTalk message to a girlfriend begins: “자기야 미안 오늘…” (“Babe, sorry, tonight…”). The youngest person on the team is already searching for a barbecue place with a room for twelve. And you, the new foreign hire, are trying to work out whether “everyone’s free, right?” was a question.

Welcome to 회식 (hoe-sik), the Korean team dinner. It’s partly a party, partly a meeting, and partly a test of social skills nobody admits is being run.

The short version: a 회식 is a meal (often with drinks) for your team, usually paid for by the company. The boss or team leader decides when, the youngest usually handles the logistics, and there’s often a toast and sometimes a second round. Since 2019, forcing people to drink or attend can count as workplace harassment under Korean law, and many teams have moved to shorter dinners, lunches, or no alcohol at all. So yes, it’s officially optional. But go to the first round when you reasonably can, stay for an hour, and leave politely. That gets you nearly all the goodwill for a fraction of the hangover.

What a 회식 actually is

The word is 회 (gathering) + 식 (meal): any company-sponsored meal outside work hours, for a team, a department or the whole office.

The classic version looks like this: a Korean barbecue restaurant, a long table with grills set into it, pork belly sizzling, bottles of green soju and beer arriving faster than anyone ordered them, and a boss who is clearly having the best night of anyone. (For how the grill and the side dishes work, see our guide to Korean restaurants.)

The usual excuses: welcoming someone (환영회), saying goodbye (송별회), finishing a big project, the year-end dinner (송년회), or simply “it’s been a while”, which is the boss’s way of saying “I miss being the boss at dinner.”

Underneath it is a real idea: people who have eaten and laughed together work better together. Koreans call that bond 정 (jeong). The argument of the last ten years is whether it has to grow at 11 p.m. over your fifth shot of soju.

Who pays: the magic of the 법카

Good news first: you almost never pay for a team 회식. The bill usually goes on the company card, known affectionately as 법카 (beop-ka), short for 법인카드, “corporate card.” When the team leader pulls it out, a small cheer is permitted.

Sometimes a senior person pays for the second round out of their own pocket, announcing it with the casual heroism of someone saving a puppy from a river: “2차는 내가 쏜다!” (“Second round’s on me!”). The correct response is loud, grateful and a little exaggerated.

Don’t offer to split the bill. At a company dinner, that’s like offering to tip your own mother.

The rounds: 1차, 2차, and the legend of 3차

A traditional 회식 is counted in rounds, called 차 (cha):

Round	Typically	The vibe
1차 (il-cha)	Dinner: barbecue, raw fish, a stew place	The “official” part. Most people come.
2차 (i-cha)	A pub, chicken-and-beer place, or 노래방 (karaoke room)	Looser. The boss sings a ballad from 1997. Everyone claps on beat.
3차 (sam-cha)	Another bar, 포장마차 street tent, more karaoke	Mostly a legend now, like dragons, or a meeting that ends early.

The 1차 is the one that counts. Show up, eat, chat and join the toast, and you’ve done the social work. Each round after that is more optional than the last, and plenty of teams now stop after one. (The drinking choreography itself, from two hands to turning your head, is in our drinking etiquette guide.)

Seating, speeches and the toast nobody prepared

At a 회식, where you sit is not random. The most senior person takes the seat furthest from the door, often in the middle of the table where everyone can see and hear them. The juniors gravitate toward the door end, close to the staff call button and the menu. (The full logic of seating and titles is in our business etiquette guide.)

Then comes the speech. The boss raises a glass and says a few words about the team, the year, the project. Then, the moment everyone dreads: “자, 우리 막내 건배사 한번 해볼까?” (“Okay, shall our youngest give us a toast?”)

The 건배사 (geon-bae-sa) is a short toast with a call-and-response. Everybody pretends they didn’t prepare one. Everybody has secretly googled “센스 있는 건배사” (witty toasts) in the bathroom ten minutes earlier.

The classic formula: the person giving the toast shouts the first part, and everyone answers with the second.

“위하여!” (wi-ha-yeo, “To…!”): the plain, all-purpose toast. The leader says “우리 팀의 발전을…” (“To our team’s success…”) and everyone shouts “위하여!” You literally cannot get this one wrong.
“진달래!” (jin-dal-lae): the name of the azalea flower, used as an acronym. One common reading is 진하고, 달콤한, 내일을 위해 (“to a rich and sweet tomorrow”). A 2014 survey of employees at the liquor company HiteJinro listed it among their favorite year-end toasts. Acronym toasts are a whole genre, and the explanation always takes longer than the drink. If you’re put on the spot, “우리 팀을 위하여!” (“To our team!”), said with confidence, beats a clever acronym that collapses halfway. Manage it in Korean as a foreigner and the table will react as if you just scored a penalty in the World Cup.

The youngest’s job description (unofficial)

The most junior person on the team, the 막내 (mak-nae), often carries a set of duties no HR document mentions:

Booking the restaurant (near the office, private room, boss approves)
Setting out spoons and chopsticks on napkins and pouring water for everyone
Watching for empty glasses, especially the boss’s, and ordering more meat before anyone asks
Queueing the boss’s song at the 노래방

In relaxed teams people share these jobs, and a good senior tells the 막내 to sit down and eat. If you’re new and young, offer to help, and don’t be offended if someone hands you the tongs. It’s a rite of passage, and you’ll hand them over someday.

“편하게 해”: the most dangerous sentence in Korean office life

At some point the boss will lean back and say:

“편하게 해, 편하게.” (“Relax, be comfortable.”)

This is sincere. It is also a trap with a velvet lining. “Be comfortable” means relax your posture a little. It does not mean put your feet on the chair, call the director by his first name and tell him what you really think of the new reporting system.

Say / Mean: “편하게 해” (pyeon-ha-ge hae) says “make yourself comfortable.” It usually means “you can relax a notch, laugh, take your jacket off.” Same with “오늘은 계급장 떼고” (“tonight, rank badges off”). It sounds like hierarchy is cancelled for the night. In reality, the badges come off at the restaurant and go right back on at 9 a.m., and everyone remembers who said what.

This is where nunchi, the Korean art of reading the room, gets its best workout. Watch the senior people. If they’re joking, joke. If they’re telling a long military-service story, nod. Relaxed and respectful at the same time: that’s the whole skill.

So is it optional or not?

Officially: yes. Very much so, and more than ever.

In July 2019, Korea added Article 76-2 to its Labor Standards Act, banning workplace harassment. The law defines it as using a superior position or relationship at work to cause physical or mental distress, or to worsen someone’s working environment, beyond what the job reasonably requires. It took effect on July 16, 2019, according to the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

The law doesn’t list behaviors itself, but the Ministry’s harassment manual makes the 회식 connection directly. Its sample workplace survey includes the items “forced me to drink or smoke against my will” and “forced me to attend 회식 against my will.” The manual also quotes a 2022 Supreme Court ruling noting that how much pressure people feel about drinking at a 회식 differs from person to person and can’t be dismissed as a matter of individual taste.

So, in theory, nobody can make you go and nobody can make you drink. In practice? Let the numbers speak:

In a 2023 Embrain Trend Monitor survey of 1,000 workers, 60.7% agreed that “회식 attendance is voluntary, but it feels like I can’t skip it.”
In the same survey, 67.3% said 회식 usually happen because the boss wants one, and 50.4% said they’d happily go if the boss wasn’t coming. (Bosses, please don’t read that one.)
A 2018 Saramin survey of 695 workers found 31.1% believed skipping a 회식 came with a penalty, most often “a quiet sense of being left out.”

That’s the gap Koreans live in: optional on paper, a little less optional in the air. Which is very Korean. As our article on why Koreans don’t say no explains, plenty of real meaning lives between the lines.

How the 회식 changed: law, the 52-hour week, COVID and the MZ generation

The old-school 회식, with three rounds, compulsory shots and a 2 a.m. taxi, has been losing ground for years. Several things pushed it.

Company drinking campaigns. Some big companies tried to rein things in long before the law did. Samsung Electronics launched a “119” campaign in 2012: one kind of drink, one round, home before 9 p.m. Chosun Biz reported that other big companies like LS Group and Hyundai Heavy Industries took up 119 too, and that Samsung later updated it in 2016 to “112”: one kind of drink, one round, two hours max. If you hear someone say “오늘은 119로 하자” (“let’s do a 119 tonight”), that’s what they mean. It’s a promise. Sometimes it’s even kept.

The 52-hour work week. Korea capped the working week at 52 hours (including overtime) starting July 1, 2018, for workplaces with 300 or more employees, with smaller firms phased in by July 2021. In Saramin’s survey that same month, 54.4% of workers said their 회식 culture had changed, and the top improvement was simply fewer 회식.

COVID-19. Distancing rules made big dinners nearly impossible, and many workers discovered they liked that. In a 2022 Incruit survey of 1,013 workers, 78.0% said their company’s 회식 culture had changed since the pandemic, and the most popular change was shorter dinners that end after the first round (61.7%).

The generation gap. Younger workers, often called the MZ generation in Korea, tend to want something different. In that 2022 Incruit survey, the most wanted format going forward was lunch with no alcohol (45.8%). Among people who chose one of the top two formats, 65.6% of those in their 20s and 71.2% of those in their 30s went for the alcohol-free lunch, against just 31.3% of those 50 and older, most of whom preferred dinner with drinks. In a 2025 Incruit year-end survey of 888 workers, 47.5% of respondents in their 20s said a year-end dinner was necessary, versus 68.9% of those 50 and over.

So now you’ll see all kinds of 회식:

Lunch 회식 (점심 회식): a nicer-than-usual lunch on the company card, back at your desk by 1:30
Culture 회식 (문화 회식): a movie, a musical, a bowling alley, an escape room
Dessert or brunch 회식: a fancy café, cakes, and nobody needs a hangover soup tomorrow
“One round” dinners: barbecue, a couple of drinks, done by nine

The traditional night out hasn’t disappeared, and it’s alive and well in plenty of offices. But it’s no longer the only version, and “I’ll skip the second round” is far more normal than it was ten years ago.

Should you go? A practical answer

Go to the 1차 when you reasonably can, especially welcome dinners, farewells and year-end events, which matter most to people. Stay at least an hour and actually talk: the 회식 is where colleagues learn you’re a person, not just a name in the group chat. You don’t have to drink; say so lightly and early and raise a glass of cider for every toast. The 2차 is genuinely optional. And if you can’t make it at all, tell the organizer early, with a clear reason.

How to leave early without causing a scene

You could try the silent disappearing act, but at a team dinner a short, polite exit works much better than vanishing. The magic moment is the gap between the 1차 and 2차, when everyone is standing outside the restaurant figuring out where to go next.

Say this	Romanization	What it means
오늘 정말 잘 먹었습니다!	o-neul jeong-mal jal meo-geot-seum-ni-da	“Thank you, I ate so well tonight!” (Say this to whoever paid.)
죄송한데 저는 먼저 들어가 보겠습니다.	joe-song-han-de jeo-neun meon-jeo deu-reo-ga bo-get-seum-ni-da	“Sorry, I’ll head home first.” The standard polite exit line.
내일 일찍 일정이 있어서요.	nae-il il-jjik il-jeong-i i-sseo-seo-yo	“I have an early start tomorrow.” A reason nobody argues with.
다음에는 꼭 끝까지 있을게요!	da-eu-me-neun kkok kkeut-kka-ji i-sseul-ge-yo	“Next time I’ll definitely stay to the end!” Everyone knows it’s a pleasantry. It still helps.
들어가세요! / 조심히 들어가세요!	deu-reo-ga-se-yo	“Get home safe!” What you say to others as they leave.

The exit, step by step:

Find the most senior person and say goodbye to them first, with a small bow. Leaving without telling the boss is the one real mistake.
Thank whoever paid.
Wave to the table and go. Don’t make a speech. Don’t let it turn into a negotiation: “한 잔만 더!” (“Just one more glass!”) is a classic stalling move, and your polite “정말 죄송해요” (“I’m really sorry”) is the classic counter.
Next morning, a quick “어제 잘 먹었습니다” (“Thanks for last night”) to the boss closes the loop.

Common 회식 mistakes

Treating “편하게 해” as a full pass. Relax a notch, not five.
Leaving without saying goodbye to the most senior person.
Pouring your own drink while the boss’s glass sits empty. See the drinking guide.
Grabbing the bill at a company dinner. The 법카 has this.
Skipping every single one without a word. You’re allowed to, but people notice a pattern more than a single absence.
Forgetting the morning-after thank-you. It takes five seconds and earns a surprising amount of credit.

The 회식 is changing fast. The “you have to come, you have to drink, you have to stay” version is fading, and Korean law now backs anyone who says no to it. But the idea behind it, that a team that eats together works better together, isn’t going anywhere. Show up for the first round, laugh at the boss’s 1997 ballad, shout “위하여!” with feeling, and head home with a polite bow. You’ll have done the Korean team dinner exactly right.