January 2025
Tourists to Korea often notice that the country is overflowing with cafes. Looking down the street, it seems like every other shop is a coffeehouse. People are always drinking coffee. They grab a cup after a meal, sip on one during a business meeting, and order one while meeting up with friends. Korea may not be a coffee-producing country, but Koreans are as fond of the stuff?and drink as much of it?as any other country. Let’s explore how much we can learn about Korean customs and culture from a cup of joe.
Writer. Sung Ji Yeon
Illustrator. RYUGOON
Koreans really love their coffee. It’s obvious when looking at the per capita coffee consumption and the number of cafes in the country. They drink an average of 405 cups of coffee a year, which is more than double the world average of 152 cups. A similar trend can be seen in the number of coffeeshops in the country. Korea has 1,384 coffeehouses per million people. Statistics aside, anybody who has visited Korea knows how serious Koreans are about their coffee. Those numerous cafes are always crowded, and customers will line up to try the latest innovation. Korea has been dubbed the “Republic of Coffee,” drawing in experts and investors from around the world.
Such Korean love for coffee can be attributed to an invention in the 1970s that had a decisive impact. “Coffee mix,” as it was called, is a sachet packed with instant coffee, sugar and cream. Korea’s preference for instant coffee underwent another major change when American cafe franchises set up shop in the late 1990s. As instant coffee gave way to bean-based beverages, cafes run by big-scale franchises spread across the country. The 2010s saw the rise of independently owned cafes, as opposed to cafe franchises. In 2002, there were just 700 cafes in Korea; by late 2010, there were 20 times as many.
Korea’s cafes and coffee aficionados raise one obvious question: why on earth is it coffee, and not another beverage, that Koreans like so much? Various explanations are given. Some say they drink coffee to wake up and focus on their work. Others mention how they’re always being offered coffee wherever they go. Still others say they enjoy sitting down with friends at a cozy coffeeshop for a few hours of conversation. For many others, drinking coffee has simply become a habit.
No doubt, many got into the habit of drinking coffee to help them stay on task in their busy lives. But for others, the habit comes from relaxing with a cup of coffee at a cafe, which provides a haven from the hustle and bustle. Cafes offer a place where both individuals and groups can take a break for the price of a cup of coffee. That’s how stopping by a cafe for some coffee became part of Koreans’ daily routines.
So that’s how Korea’s coffee-drinking culture developed, but some aspects remain surprising. Koreans have a definitive preference for certain menu items. At the same time, entrepreneurs have engaged with coffee culture by developing one-of-a-kind products and places. That reflects the trend among Koreans to devote more attention to personally meaningful products and experiences as their income level rises.
Korea’s coffee culture has some fascinating quirks, the best-known of which may be their remarkable fondness for iced americanos. So many Koreans love the drink that France’s AFP wire service dubbed it “the unofficial national drink.” Many Koreans keep ordering cold drinks even in the middle of the winter. This tendency is reflected in the expression “eol-juk-a”?an abbreviation for a phrase meaning “(I’ll drink) an iced americano even if I freeze to death.” There are doubtless several reasons why people prefer cold drinks, but the general idea is that people want to gulp it down without waiting for it to cool off. That can be seen as Korean coffee culture interacting with the “ppalli-ppalli” trait of getting things done in a hurry.
Another unique feature of Korean coffee culture is its profusion of specialty cafes. Korea has a vast number of sprawling coffeeshops that stretch the traditional definition of a cafe to its limits. Around the country, there are cafes large enough to comfortably accommodate hundreds of people?three-story buildings selling nothing but coffee, warehouse-type cafes, and botanical-gardens-cum-cafes. There are also any number of smaller cafes based on unique concepts. To take just a few examples, there are rainy-day cafes watered by sprinklers all day long, cafes decorated like the cabin of an airplane, cafes set up like a subway station, and even cafes inspired by a bathhouse. In Korea, cafes aren’t just a place for drinking coffee. They function more like a theme park tailored to maximize your enjoyment of the coffee-drinking experience.
A third remarkable feature of Korea’s coffee culture is the tremendous number of unique menu items. Korean coffee drinks are themselves funky and fantastic, and local roasters have a knack for making delicious coffee with a range of recipes. But more notably, Korean baristas add in unique local ingredients to make coffee beverages that are not to be found anywhere else in the world. Those ingredients range from local products such as ssuk (mugwort) and pat (red beans) to traditional dishes such as injeolmi (bean-powder-coated rice cakes).
As this suggests, a cup of Korean coffee contains a dash of local culture and history. At the same time, that cup is writing a new chapter in the history of coffee, boldly going where no barista has gone before. That’s all the more reason to find a cafe that suits your fancy and sample a cup of the local brew when you visit Korea.
