A milder bottle that replaced an older brand.

Chum Churum — in Korean 처음처럼, also romanised Cheoeum Cheoreom, and meaning roughly “like the first time” — is a South Korean soju now made and sold by Lotte Chilsung Beverage. It was not a Lotte creation. Korean Wikipedia records that the brand was launched on 7 February 2006 by the liquor business of Doosan, the Korean industrial group, as a renewal of the company’s soju line.

The newspaper Sports Kyunghyang reported in May 2006 that Chum Churum replaced Doosan’s earlier soju brand, called San, which had been sold at stronger strengths and had a loyal following, and that the new soju went on sale at 20 degrees. The same report described it as the first 20-degree soju on the market, sold as a milder soju made with alkaline water, and set it against the leading regional rivals of the day, among them Jinro’s Chamisul. According to Sports Kyunghyang, about 63 million bottles were shipped in the first hundred days, a figure the paper said more than doubled the previous industry record.

The Seoul business daily The Asia Business Daily reported in April 2020 that Chum Churum sold 10 million bottles within 17 days of its launch and 100 million bottles in under six months. The same report traced how the brand’s strength had been lowered step by step since then: to 19.5 degrees in 2007, 18 degrees in February 2014, 17 degrees in April 2018 and 16.9 degrees in December 2019, which the paper described as the first nationally sold mainstream soju at that strength.

A borrowed phrase, a scholar’s handwriting and a magpie.

The name came from a book. Korean Wikipedia says Cheoeumcheoreom is the title of an essay collection by Shin Young-bok, a professor at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul, and that the phrase was proposed as a brand name by Son Hye-won, head of the naming firm Crosspoint, who liked a line from Shin’s writing. Doosan adopted it for the new soju.

The lettering came from the same writer. Korea JoongAng Daily reported in March 2012 that the calligraphy of the logo is by Shin Young-bok, and that the company said he received no payments for the work; Doosan, the paper reported, funded scholarships at Shin’s university because he had refused compensation. In an interview published by Lady Kyunghyang in March 2007, Shin said he had at first been reluctant about the commercial use of his handwriting and had given the proceeds to a scholarship, and he described his own brush style as a people’s hand that suited soju, the most everyday of drinks.

Around the name, Korean Wikipedia says, the label places a magpie above and a sprout below, symbols meant to carry the idea of a fresh start that the phrase expresses.

The other half of the brand story is the water. The company has described Chum Churum as the world’s first soju made with alkaline-reduced water, and The Asia Business Daily reported in 2020 that about 80 per cent of the water used in its production had been replaced with that water. Korean Wikipedia describes the process as separating water through an ion-exchange membrane and then filtering and purifying the alkaline portion; these are the company’s own production claims.

Advertising has relied on familiar faces. English Wikipedia lists the singer Lee Hyori as the face of the brand from 2007 to 2012, followed over the years by others including Suzy and Jennie of BLACKPINK, with the actor Han So-hee succeeding Jennie.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all sake, shochu and soju names: Dassai, Hakkaisan, Kubota, Ozeki, Sho Chiku Bai, iichiko and Chum Churum. Sake, shochu and soju brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family breweries that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a restaurant list.

A sake, shochu or soju brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drink is actually made and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its sake, shochu or soju is made and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From Doosan to Lotte, and a sugar-free sibling.

Three years after its launch the brand changed hands. Drinks International, citing Reuters, reported on 6 January 2009 that the Lotte group had agreed to buy Doosan’s spirits-making division, and Korea JoongAng Daily has since described Chum Churum as the soju brand Lotte Chilsung Beverage acquired from Doosan in 2009. Lotte Chilsung, the drinks company of the Korean Lotte group behind Chilsung Cider, thereby added soju to its range.

Under Lotte the range has widened. Korean Wikipedia records the flavoured Soonhari, launched on 20 March 2015 with a yuzu version and followed by peach and other fruit flavours, and English Wikipedia says Soonhari began to be exported to the United States in 2019. In September 2022 Lotte Chilsung launched Saero, a sugar-free soju made without fructose; KED Global reported in May 2024 that it reached 50 million bottles in four months and 100 million in seven, that it is made at the company’s Chungju Plant No. 2, and that exports had begun to Southeast Asia and Japan in April 2023 and to the United States that summer.

The brand has also had to answer questions about who owns it. The Korea Times reported in October 2019 that, during a consumer boycott of Japanese goods, Lotte’s liquor business faced online claims that it was a Japanese company; it replied that Chum Churum is a Korean brand made and sold in Korea and separate from Lotte Asahi Liquor, an importer of Japanese beer.

The name needs a little care in search. It is spelled several ways in English, including Chum-Churum, Chumchurum and Cheoeum Cheoreom, and Shin Young-bok’s book and several Korean songs share the same title.

For a design guide, Chum Churum shows how a borrowed phrase and a scholar’s handwriting can give a mass-market soju its voice, carried from Doosan to Lotte without changing its name. Compare Jinro, the 1924 soju name behind Chamisul, and Lotte, the group whose drinks company makes it today. For this guide we use bottle green, deep pine and brush black with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Chum Churum’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.