Caffeine battles: is tea losing out to coffee in Korea?
After a millennium as the nation’s favourite drink, tumbling tea consumption is bitter news for growers to swallow as coffee shoots ahead in popularity
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Serving hot tea to visitors has long been a tradition in Korea, although its people are not tea addicts.
The annual per capita tea consumption in Korea is merely 168 grams, far less than that of Turkey, Ireland and Britain, the world's top three tea-consuming countries.
Despite Korea’s relatively low tea consumption, tea drinking has long been part of Koreans’ daily lives.
Beverage consumption in the past decade, however, has broken the centuries-old tradition. Coffee has conquered Koreans’ taste buds. An increase in coffee consumption has come at the expense of tea, pushing tea farmers out of business.
In the mid-2000s, annual tea sales peaked at 200 billion won (US$178 million). The tea market then was viewed as promising as tea consumption had increased faster than coffee.
However, what has happened in the past decade is precisely the opposite.
The tea market has shrunk to 50 billion won, whereas then 400 billion-won coffee market has expanded to 7 trillion won.