Comment by bobxmax

9 hours ago

If this is correct, it seems like Seoul has over 40x the number of bars that Chicago has, despite having only about 4x the population

How in the hell?

Many countries have much more used “public” spaces, and people spend much more time in them, together.

The idea of driving home to the suburbs and locking yourself into your private home is very North American.

I just got back from10 months across Europe. The number of people in public places eating, chatting and just spending time (no simply going somewhere) makes LA or Chicago look like a ghost town.

  • Sure, but that's still an astronomically higher number of bars

    the UK in totality has 45k pubs, nearly half Seoul's number

    this is mostly emblematic of South Korea's major alcoholism problem. way too many bars and too much drinking.