JINRO’s First Global Campaign with BTS’s V Surpasses 500 Million Views on Social Media

HiteJinro’s first campaign video with BTS’s V, titled “My Favorite JINRO,” has surpassed 500 million views across global social media. V serves as the global ambassador for JINRO. The video was released on July 23.

The main commercial garnered over 300 million views, with user engagement (likes, comments, shares and similar actions) reaching approximately 10 million cases. Compared with the period before the campaign teaser was released on the 3rd of last month, the total number of followers across all global social media channels also increased by about 200,000.

HiteJinro has been sequentially releasing content including posters, teasers, main commercials and short-form videos.

In addition to official content, secondary user-generated content is spreading rapidly, centred on fan communities and social media. Examples continue to emerge of overseas consumers posting photos or videos of themselves buying the product, or capturing outdoor advertisements to share on communities and social networks.

HiteJinro is currently running outdoor campaign advertising in major global cities, including Times Square in New York, Toronto, Beijing and Shanghai, Tokyo, Ho Chi Minh City, Manila and Sydney. The strategy links online fandom with local offline advertising to raise brand awareness in the global spirits market.

So what is the soju that V is actually holding?

For readers arriving from the campaign rather than from Korea, the short answer is that JINRO is a brand of soju (소주) — Korea’s national distilled spirit, and the drink you have seen in almost every Korean drama dinner scene.

Standard soju comes in a 360ml bottle, is clear, tastes clean and slightly sweet, and sits at roughly 16–17% ABV. That is about half the strength of vodka or whisky and roughly twice that of wine. It is not sipped alone; it is poured into small shot-sized glasses, shared around a table, and drunk with food.

JINRO is made by HiteJinro, Korea’s largest soju producer. The company’s domestic flagship is Chamisul (참이슬), while the JINRO name — revived as a retro-styled product in 2019 and now the main export label — is what most overseas drinkers will find on a shelf.

If you want the full picture of what else is worth drinking in Korea, we have written a separate guide: Korean Alcohol: The Complete Guide for Foreigners.

Why a soju brand hired a BTS member

Celebrity endorsement is not a new idea in Korean soju. For decades the category has been sold at home through the country’s most recognisable faces, to the point where the annual announcement of a brand’s new model is itself a news event. What has changed is the audience.

Soju’s domestic market is mature and demographically flat. Growth now has to come from abroad, and the customers abroad are not being reached by Korean television. They are being reached by the same platforms that carry K-pop and Korean drama — which makes a global ambassador with an enormous international following a more direct route to a first-time soju drinker than any traditional advertising buy.

The figures released for this campaign describe exactly that mechanism. The 500 million views are not the interesting number on their own. The roughly 200,000 new followers across HiteJinro’s global channels are, because they represent people who moved from watching a video to following a liquor brand — and the fan-made photographs of Times Square and of bottles bought in local shops represent the step after that.

Soju’s long march overseas

JINRO has appeared at or near the top of global spirit brand volume rankings for years, a position it holds largely on the strength of domestic Korean consumption. Being the best-selling spirit in the world while remaining almost unknown outside one country is an unusual place to be, and it is the gap this kind of campaign is designed to close.

Two things have made that gap narrower recently. The first is the flavoured soju category — grapefruit, peach, plum, yogurt — which typically sits around 12% ABV and gives newcomers a much softer introduction than the original. The second is Korean food and entertainment arriving first: a great many people abroad now know what a Korean barbecue table looks like before they ever taste anything on it.

Where to actually buy it

In Korea, soju is in every convenience store, open 24 hours, usually for less than the price of a coffee. Outside Korea, availability has improved sharply:

• Korean and pan-Asian grocers — the most reliable option almost anywhere, and usually the cheapest.
• Large supermarket chains — many now carry at least one soju in the world spirits section, generally the flavoured range.
• Korean restaurants — the intended context. Soju was designed to be drunk with grilled pork and beef, not on its own.
• Duty free — worth a look for the traditional distilled sojus, which are a different and considerably more expensive category.

If you are trying soju for the first time

• Do not shoot it neat on an empty stomach. Soju is a food drink. It is built to be alternated with grilled meat, stew or fried chicken.
• Let someone else pour. Korean drinking custom is that you fill other people’s glasses and they fill yours — pouring your own is the one thing that will mark you out immediately.
• Use two hands when pouring for, or receiving from, anyone older than you.
• Try somaek. Soju poured into beer, roughly three parts to seven. It is how most Koreans actually drink it.
• Then try the other kind. Traditional distilled soju — rice, distilled, nothing added, often 25–45% ABV — tastes nothing like the green bottle and is where the category gets genuinely interesting.

What the campaign says about where soju is going

Korean spirits companies have spent the last few years trying to solve a specific problem: soju sells enormously well in one country and barely registers in most others. The usual export route — put the bottle in Korean restaurants abroad and wait — works, but slowly, and it only ever reaches people who were already looking for Korean food.

What campaigns like this one attempt instead is to reach people who have no particular interest in Korean drinking culture yet, but who already follow Korean music. The bet is that a first bottle bought because of a video is still a first bottle, and that the second one gets bought for ordinary reasons.

Whether that converts into sustained overseas volume is the open question, and view counts do not answer it. The number worth watching over the next year is not engagement but distribution — how many supermarket chains outside Asia end up stocking soju in the main spirits aisle rather than the world foods section.

Frequently asked questions

What soju does BTS’s V advertise?

V is the global ambassador for JINRO, the soju brand made by HiteJinro. The campaign he appears in is called “My Favorite JINRO” and launched with a main commercial released on July 23.

How strong is JINRO soju?

Standard soju is usually around 16–17% ABV — roughly half the strength of vodka or whisky, and about twice that of wine. Flavoured versions are lower, typically around 12%.

What does soju taste like?

Clean, slightly sweet, with a light burn. Mass-market soju is deliberately neutral, because it is designed to sit behind food rather than compete with it.

Can I buy Korean soju outside Korea?

Yes, and far more easily than a few years ago. Korean and pan-Asian grocers are the most reliable source, many large supermarket chains now stock at least the flavoured range, and any Korean restaurant will have it.

How do Koreans drink soju?

Cold, in small glasses, shared around a table with food, and never poured by yourself — you fill other people’s glasses and they fill yours. Mixing it into beer, a combination called somaek, is extremely common.

The campaign runs across HiteJinro’s global social media channels and in outdoor placements in the cities listed above.