Korean drinking culture is frequently reported and rarely understood. The shots, the rounds, the work dinners - what outsiders miss is that it is a choreography of respect: you never pour your own glass, you receive with two hands, you turn slightly from your senior to drink. The vessel matters because the ritual does.
Which is why the forged brass soju cup exists. Bangjja bronze - hammered thousands of times until the metal rings - turns the toast into a sound event: glasses of brass struck together produce a clear bell tone that porcelain and glass cannot. At a Korean table, that ring is the toast. The cups also chill fast and hold the cold, which soju repays in smoothness.
A pair of forged cups is the cheapest complete entry into both Korean drinking culture and Korean metal craft - and doubles, heretically but excellently, as whisky ware.
Hand-forged sets from the Myungsung Yugi and Notdam workshops are in The Market and Hidden Korea; the full story of the metal is in our bangjja guide.