The new product is called Gyeondyo, which can be translated as "Tough it out" or "Hang on". Company officials explained that the message is addressed to Korean office workers who often have to endure a long day at work after a night of heavy drinking.
In South Korea, it is hard for an employee to excuse himself from drinking in the evening with colleagues, especially superiors. Regular staff parties are a part of the country's business culture. Workers often feel pressured to drink even if they don't like alcohol so as not to be frowned upon. The ice cream is supposed to help such workers cope with the consequences of their attempts to fit in.
The grapefruit ice-cream contains oriental raisin tree fruit juice — a popular anti-hangover treatment in South Korea, Reuters reported.
South Korea tops the Asia-Pacific rating of countries regarding the consumption of alcohol. According to a 2014 World Health Organization report, individual South Koreans drink 12.3 liters of alcohol per year. The total annual sales of anti-hangover medicine in the country is nearly $126 million.
Alcohol creates a huge industry of other products in South Korea, including special beauty care products for women, aimed at softening skin that gets dry because of drinking.
On another note, ice cream seems to be getting a lot of attention all over East Asia. In April, a Japanese firm, Akagi Nyugyo Co. Ltd, released a video in which staff apologized for raising prices of the company's ice cream for the first time since 1991.
The video went viral, collecting millions of views. Akagi Nyugyo produced ice cream has unusual tastes, such as potato, spaghetti or soup.
