A few weeks ago, the most powerful man in tech pulled on a pair of clear plastic gloves and tore into a piece of fried chicken in Hongdae. A couple of days later, standing on a baseball field in Seoul before throwing out the first pitch, Jensen Huang — the CEO of Nvidia — told a stadium full of people that nothing beats chimaek (치맥, fried chicken + beer).
The clips went everywhere. And of course they did: a white-haired billionaire who decides which companies get the chips that run the entire AI economy, sitting in a chicken joint, hands greasy, perfectly happy. His surname, Huang, happens to be written with the same character as a common Korean family name, Hwang (황). Half the country made the same joke within an hour — he’s basically one of us now.
Here’s the part the clips don’t capture, though. Jensen Huang didn’t stumble onto some exotic Korean ritual. He did the single most ordinary thing a person can do here on a weeknight. If you want to understand Korea, forget the idea of chimaek as a thing you try. That’s not what it is to us.
It’s the “let’s keep it light” button
Most foreigners meet chimaek through a screen — a K-drama scene, a travel video, a “10 foods you MUST eat in Seoul” list. So it arrives looking like an event. Something you schedule. A box to check.
For us it isn’t an event. It’s a setting.
Picture the alternative. A proper Korean dinner-out often means a meat place: samgyeopsal (삼겹살, grilled pork belly) sizzling on the grill, soju (소주) going around, everyone settling in for two or three hours of serious eating and serious drinking. That’s great. But it’s a commitment. Some nights you don’t want the commitment. You want to fill your stomach a little, sit somewhere with a nice easy mood, talk, laugh, and not turn it into a whole production.
That’s the exact moment someone says, “치맥이나 할까?” — should we just grab some chimaek? The “just” is the whole point. It’s the lightweight option. Chicken and a cold draft beer (생맥주, draft beer), and you keep it easy.
There are unwritten rules, the kind nobody explains because nobody thinks they need explaining:
- With beer, you go plain fried, not sauced. Korean fried chicken comes in two main camps — huraideu (후라이드, plain crispy) and yangnyeom (양념, sweet-spicy glazed). Yangnyeom is wonderful. But when the point is beer, you want the plain crispy kind. The clean salt-and-crunch is what a cold lager is built for; the sweet sauce fights it.
- Draft beer, light lager. These days mine is Terra, but the brand matters less than the type. A crisp, cold lager cuts the oil. A heavy craft ale just sits there.
- My order is BBQ golden olive chicken. Everyone has their chain. This is mine.
And notice where all of this happens: not at some destination. After work, or just delivered to the apartment on a random Tuesday. That’s the real face of chimaek — not a night out, but a Tuesday.
Jensen just did a textbook Korean evening
So back to Jensen Huang. People framed his chicken run like he’d been let in on a secret. He hadn’t. He just did the standard template for a good Korean night out.
His night went like this: first, samgyeopsal and somaek (소맥, soju mixed with beer) with a table full of Korean conglomerate chairmen. Then, second stop, a chicken place for chimaek. To a foreign eye that reads as “he ate two dinners.” To a Korean eye, that’s not two dinners — that’s a textbook first round and second round.
Let me explain the structure, because it runs almost everything social here. The 1차 (il-cha, literally “first round”) is the main event: the real meal, the real drinking, usually something hearty like grilled meat. Then you move. The 2차 (i-cha, “second round”) is a change of scene and, usually, a change of gear — lighter, looser, somewhere new.
Honestly, you’ve probably done this without a name for it. If you’ve ever finished dinner at one place and said “let’s go grab a drink somewhere else,” that was a 1차 and a 2차. The only difference is that Koreans count the rounds out loud and treat the sequence as the default shape of a night — first round, second round, and on a night that gets away from everyone, a 3차 (sam-cha) nobody planned and everyone regrets.
And here’s the second life of chimaek, the one Jensen landed on perfectly. By the time the first round ends, you’re already full. You want the second round — you’re not ready to go home — but you don’t want another heavy meal. So the move is chimaek and a draft beer. Light food, cold beer, good mood, no commitment. That’s not him going native by accident. That’s just what the second round is for.
If you want the full picture of how Koreans actually drink and why the rounds work the way they do, I’ve written about both the dinners and the alcohol separately — links at the bottom.
[Image: A baseball stadium or a Han River park at dusk, an open box of fried chicken and cups of draft beer between friends — chimaek as the default backdrop for watching and hanging out]
Even my seven-year-old has chimaek rules
If chimaek were really nightlife, it would stop at the front door of a family apartment. It doesn’t.
When we order chicken at home, the table sorts itself out automatically. My daughter — she’s seven — gets chicken and a glass of sparkling water. The grown-ups get the chimaek part. And there’s a rule in our house that I never announced out loud but that’s now iron law: the drumstick is hers.
For most of my life the drumstick was mine. The best piece, obviously. Then she started eating chicken, and somewhere in there, without a conversation, the drumstick quietly became her piece. Korean dads aren’t famous for saying I love you. We say it in other ways — peeling fruit and leaving it on your desk at 11pm, or handing over the drumstick every single time and pretending we prefer the wing.
That’s the thing foreigners miss when they file chimaek under “Korean nightlife.” A lot of it happens in living rooms, across generations, on ordinary evenings. It’s not a bar scene. It’s domestic.
So, about coming to Korea
People plan trips around “doing chimaek in Seoul,” like it’s a landmark. I get it — it photographs well and it tastes incredible. But you can’t really do chimaek as an event, any more than you can do sitting on your own couch.
It’s the button you press when you want the night to be light and good. When the meat-and-soju version feels like too much. When the first round filled you up but you’re not ready to call it. When it’s a Tuesday and you just want chicken and a cold beer and nobody to impress.
Jensen Huang didn’t discover Korea in a chicken shop. He just did the most normal thing here, and looked completely at home doing it — which, honestly, might be the most Korean compliment there is.
So when you come: don’t make it a thing. Some random evening, order a plain fried chicken, pour a cold draft, and keep it light. That’s the whole secret. There isn’t a deeper one.
Does your country have a “default light combo” like this — the thing you reach for when you want easy and good, not big and serious? I’d love to hear what it is.
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