Chapter 4 observes the development of soju in Korea during the Chosŏn period, which is characterized by its localization with regard to methods and culture. This period is important to the history of soju, because the spirit spread rapidly throughout Korea and settled into its role as an important Korean alcohol, along with other kinds of alcoholic beverage that had been consumed since antiquity. Soju evolved, leading to its documentation in a variety of sources, including cookbooks that provided households with recipes using soju, medical books containing guides for medical applications of soju, and official documents testifying to the governmental use of soju in domestic and diplomatic gift-giving, an important political activity in premodern government. Soju continued to spread as well: from Korea, the spirit traveled to countries like Japan, as either a diplomatic gift or a trade commodity, creating the opportunity for its transformation into a local Japanese beverage still popular today.

Chapter 1 opens the book with a brief global history of distilled liquors, focusing on current debates about their origins and early development and the possible transfers of knowledge that linked major Eurasian societies in ancient times, including Greece, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, China, and Mongolia. This allows us to perceive the multiple origins of soju, moving beyond the expected linear causation. A circulation pattern appears throughout Eurasia, at least wherever premodern occurrences of cross-cultural, inter-civilizational exchanges are well documented. A close examination of distillation processes in the Middle East, South Asia, China, and Central Asia reveals that they bear different characteristics with regard to both their ingredients and their distillation methods. However, one cannot overlook the fact that all the distilled liquors in these countries were originally called arak (ʿaraq meaning “sweat” or “perspiration” in Arabic), which suggests a common agent of transference – namely the Mongols. While the Arabs probably developed distilled liquors, including ʿaraq, the Mongols contributed to a mass-produced arak with portable stills and then popularized the word. With this, the chapter ends with an overview of the Mongols’ role in the widespread dissemination of arak-type spirits to different parts of Eurasia, including Korea.

Chapter 3 examines cross-cultural contacts between the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) in Korea and the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) in China and Mongolia (and the broader Mongol Empire), in order to refine our historical context to make clear the kind of Sino-Korean interactions that made the transfer of distilled liquors to Korea possible. As its suzerain state on Koryŏ’s border for nearly 150 years, the Mongols were able to exert considerable influence on Korea. This opened the way to a wide range of cross-cultural interactions, from the stationing of Mongol soldiers on Cheju Island to trade to court relations and intermarriage, situations that created opportunities for the exchange of such things as liquors, concepts of drinking culture, and still technologies, laying the foundations for soju’s development. Such a process is not excusive to alcohol; we see similar patterns in a variety of cultural artifacts (even Korean foods and national dress). Cross-cultural interactions between the Yuan and Koryŏ realms provided Koreans with access to genuinely cosmopolitan societies in Eurasia, so the range of influences went well beyond China or the Mongols. In this way, soju provides an excellent vehicle for understanding both the extent of Eurasian influence on Korea and also Korea’s place in Eurasia under the Pax Mongolica.