COLUMN
From the Spice Road to the Coffee Road
By Park Seung-gyu cultural critic
When it comes to Indonesian coffee, KopiLuwak is the immediate choice. It is made from coffee cherries that Asian palm civets have eaten and defecated. Thanks to its unique flavor and scarcity, Kopi Luwak boasts high prices. Due to Kopi Luwak’s commercial success, Viet Nam followed suit by developing coffee extracted from the feces of weasels. Coffee trees were introduced to Viet Nam during the French colonial period (1884–1945). Coffee has been one of the country's main exports. Although a latecomer, Viet Nam has since overtaken most Latin American countries and become the world’s second-largest coffee producer behind Brazil. The famous Con Sóc coffee, contrary to its name which means squirrel, is not coffee made from squirrel feces; the name just refers to the picture of a squirrel on the packaging.
In Thailand and India, ivory coffee is produced by feeding coffee cherries to elephants, and there are now also coffees made by feeding coffee cherries to monkeys in Yemen, goats in Ethiopia, and even bats in the West Indies. Most of Thailand’s coffee is produced in the mountainous regions of northern Chiang Rai Province. Bordering with Lao PDR and Myanmar, the area still known as “Golden Triangle” used to be infamous for cultivating poppies.
In China, coffee was first cultivated in the 20th century. A French missionary planted coffee trees in Yunnan, a mountainous region in the southwestern part of the country famous for pu’er tea. Tea fields that represent Chinese tradition are gradually converted into coffee plantations. This new wave is turning the country into an up-and-coming coffee powerhouse. Behind China’s recent coffee boom are higher income levels and the beverage preferences of Generation MZ. In Japan, coffee was introduced in the 1700s, much earlier than in Korea, by Portuguese and Dutch traders via Dejima, a major trading port in Nagasaki.
Meanwhile, Koreans started drinking coffee since the days of King Gojong (r. 1864–1907), in the late Joseon period. At that time, the drink was called “gabi,” “gabae,” or “yangtang,” written in Chinese characters. The 2012 film Gabi, a historical drama about the conspiracy surrounding the assassination of Emperor Gojong, features coffee as well, and Gojong is also shown drinking coffee at the Glory Hotel in the 2018 TV series Mr. Sunshine. Along with sugar from the West, coffee first arrived in Korea at the southern port of Busan, making the journey from Nagasaki via Tsushima to the Choryang Waegwan area, which acted as a stage for Japanese trade and diplomacy during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945).
“Coffee mix,” instant coffee mixed with creamer and sugar, was invented in Korea in 1976. Today, coffee has become Korean people’s favorite beverage. With 1,384 coffee shops for every million people, Korea boasts the highest per capita number of coffee shops in the world, followed by the UK (386), the US (185), and China (71). One may even say that it has become a “coffee nation.”
KOREA FOUNDATION
