Dong Dong Ju is one of the greatest traditional alcoholic drinks of Korea. It's served in a bowl with a ladle, and drunk out of a bowl. It's thick like a soup, almost the texture of yogurt, and served cold. The first sip was extremely sour, with a slight flavor of rice wine. But it's actually pretty smooth. It goes down much easier than soju or makgeolli. It is a little sour, even after you get used to it, but there is no aftertaste.  It is alcohol, but even after drinking the whole bowl among two people, I can't feel any effects. It's definitely not as strong as the other Korean rice wines.

The first time I tried aloe juice, I had just arrived in Seoul, Korea. I couldn't wait, so I bought it on the way out of the airport in a convenience store. I have an idea of what I thought aloe should taste and smell like - it has a characteristic smell. Most people in the US might be familiar with aloe because it has a cooling sensation if you rub the plant (or products made from it) on sunburn. Not exactly something I'd think about drinking.

Well, it tastes a little bit like real aloe, but the second-best way I can think of to describe it is like watermelon bubblicious gum. It has little peices of pulp that are pretty similar to the grape drink. It's good and refreshing, kinda sweet with no aftertaste.

This one gets my full recommendation. Good Stuff.

This mulberry drink actually tastes like it's namesake fruit, which I've found rare in the many fruit juices I've tried. It has a distinctly "planty" fresh taste, like you're chewing on a sapling. It's hard to describe the flavor of this drink to someone who has never tasted it or mulberry before. It's somewhere between apple, cranberry, raspberry, and birch. The birch is the weird part.

This plum juice from Korea is very sweet, and tasted like watermelon jolly ranchers. It even reminded me a bit of smarties candy, which I love. While it's a little too sweet for me to drink everyday, and it doesn't taste like plum really at all, I think it's overall a good drink.

I wish I knew the name of this one, but I can't read Korean. If you can help me out with the name, please leave a message in the comments. Thanks!

Makgeolli is definitely one of the weirdest Korean drinks I tried. It's fizzy. It looks like it has milk in it, and this makes a weird foam at the top. It smells like vinegar. You can taste the alcohol in it, but it's weak -  like 10%, around the same level as soju or sake. It tastes a white russian gone wrong, plus soda. Even with the small amount of alcohol, after a few sips I can already feel it in my head, a slight soju-like headache. My Chinese friend tells me it's a type of rice wine called mi jiu (米酒）in Chinese, and now that she mentions it, it does taste pretty similar to that, and has the same warming effect on my face. It's surprising how 10% alcohol can hit you quickly if it's something you're not used to.

Sorry about the out-of-focus picture -  It's the best one I could take at the time.

This is another milky creamy soft drink from Korea. It's basically Coca-Cola's version of milkis, it tastes pretty much exactly the same and is really good. Mmm who would've thought milk soda would be so tasty?

Maybe this drink is not so weird, but it is interesting and should be tried if you get a chance. It tastes like rice wine and is pretty smooth going down. It's a Korean classic. Pictured is one of the most popular brands.

Pocari sweat has to be the most famous weird drink on the internet. It's made almost every list of top 10 weird drinks that I've ever read. But the people who made these lists obviously didn't taste the drink. They just looked at the label and thought it had a weird name.

Sure, it might seem weird to call a drink "sweat," but it's just a sports drink. I saw a commercial for Pocari Sweat that said "it has composition similar to body fluid, so it is absorbed quickly" to rehydrate you. That's where it gets the name sweat. Those of us in the states will be familiar with Gatorate's marketing of their electrolytes - same concept, fancier name.

In the taste department, Pocari Sweat is actually one of my favorite sports drink. It only comes in one flavor, which tastes like Gatorade glacier blast or whatever the white flavor is. The flavor doesn't really taste like any fruit I can think of - it's very neutral. Not too sweet, and refreshing. Even though it's an internet weird drink legend, it's actually nothing special.

There are versions from China, Korea, and Japan, and it's spreading! The commercial I mentioned above was on Etihad Airlines flying to Abu Dhabi. I don't know if it's spreading because of the name, or despite of it. But I would choose this over Gatorade or Powerade any day.  I'm curious to see if they are going to come out with any more flavors.

This weird drink from Korea tastes like apple pie in a can. A spoonful of cinnamon in every sip. This flavor is really awesome at first, but gets a little overwhelming after a while. It has the after taste of cinnamon, tannin-y. It's smooth and slightly syrupy, and not carbonated.

If you get a chance, definitely try this drink. It's delicious, but one can will be enough. If you're thirsty for other Nostalgia drinks, also check out Shikhye.

Crushed Strawberry Drink is another crushed-fruit drink from Korea. It smells like one of my favorite candies of all time - the hard candy with liquid filling where the wrapper is designed to look like a strawberry. I'm sure at least some readers know what candy I'm talking about.

The juice itself doesn't taste as good as it smells though - it's a really sweet, flat strawberry flavor. My first instinct was right, and it does taste like the liquid inside of that strawberry candy. The thing that makes this a weird drink though is that it has little chunks of strawberry floating around in it. Most people are used to orange juice having pulp, but not strawberry pulp.

Actually, how many of you have even drank strawberry juice at all? I've seen it blended into smoothies, but I never thought of it as a good juicin' fruit. The strawberry pulp is less like crushed strawberry than strawberry shreds. You can feel them when you drink it, but only if you're paying attention. We're not talking chewable strawberry chunks here people.

To be honest, I didn't have high expectations for this Korean crushed strawberry drink when I picked it up in a store in China. It lived up to my expectations exactly. It comes in a small can like a lot of Korean soft drinks, and it's the perfect size.  It's good for a tasting of an interesting flavor, but it's not particularly refreshing and I probably wouldn't want to drink a lot of it.