Comment by pjc50
11 hours ago
Just to compare, they also have a tour for the UK https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/uk/index.html : 49,687 pubs.
They are such an urban phenomenon. A largely empty rural state, with the legacy of prohibition, where you have to drive? That's going to have way fewer drinking locations. A culture of hanging out and drinking requires walkable urbanism. Many of the UK pubs pre-date the invention of the car; "peak pub" appears to have been the late 1800s with over 100,000.
I'm impressed that Korea has more than the UK, but this is definitely going to be a matter of size and the tiny Korean bars.
> A culture of hanging out and drinking requires walkable urbanism.
I don't think that's really true. In the UK, villages had pubs. Gradually some of the villages were joined together into larger cities, and the pubs remained. It wasn't planned as walkable urbanism.
You didn't have to plan to get walkable urbanism before cars. It just happened because everyone needed a pub, store, school, etc. within walking distance.
But it wasn't urban. That's my point.