Daehan Dawon Boseong Green tea Plantation — terraced fields
Image by YHBae from Pixabay

Daehan Dawon Boseong Green tea Plantation

  • 2 min read
  • 34.715° N 127.079° E

Interesting facts

  • Daehan Dawon alone accounts for more than a third of all the tea produced in Boseong County.
  • Boseong County supplies roughly 40 percent of South Korea's tea, and almost a third of the country's tea farmland lies within it.
  • In 2002 Boseong green tea became the first agricultural product in South Korea to be registered as a geographical indication.
  • The 1997 television commercial that made the plantation famous across the country was made for the mobile operator SK Telecom.
  • The tea gardens served as a filming location for Summer Scent, a 2003 KBS romantic drama starring Song Seung-heon and Son Ye-jin.
  • Boseong's spring tea festival dates back to the mid-1970s, making it one of the longest-running tea events in Korea.
  • After green tea demand slumped in the 1980s, local authorities revived the industry with subsidies and research partnerships with universities.

Why it is worth it

Rows of clipped tea bushes run in tight contour lines up the slopes of Mount Hwangseong, so that a whole hillside reads as a single green fingerprint. Daehan Dawon is the largest tea estate in Boseong County, the corner of South Jeolla Province that Korea itself calls its green tea capital, and the view from the upper terraces down over the curving hedges is the image most Koreans associate with the region.

The estate has a relatively recent history set against a very old crop. Tea in Korea is recorded as far back as the Silla period in the 7th century, but large-scale cultivation in Boseong only began in the 1930s. The tea company behind Daehan Dawon traces its origins to 1939; in 1957 its founder, Jang Yeong-seop, acquired the forested slopes at Bongsan-ri and began planting tea alongside cedar, cypress and bamboo. Over the following decades the plantation grew into the biggest in the county, and in 1994 it was licensed as a tourist farm while remaining private, working land. A television advertisement filmed among the terraces in 1997 made the place famous across the country.

What makes Daehan Dawon so striking is the way cultivation and landscape merge. The bushes are trimmed into rounded ridges that follow every fold of the mountain, while tall cedars line the approach and frame the upper fields. The first leaves are picked around May and graded into the fine early-season teas that Boseong is known for; the county as a whole produces a large share of Korea's green tea. Each spring the Boseong tea festival brings leaf picking and tea-making to the surrounding area. A second Daehan estate lies in Hoecheon-myeon, nearer the coast, while the Korea Tea Museum stands close to the main plantation.

Getting there

Daehan Dawon lies in Bongsan-ri, about 6 km from the county town of Boseong. The nearest airport is Gwangju Airport (KWJ), roughly 52 km away in a straight line. Boseong town has served as the transport hub of the county since the 1930s.

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34.71503, 127.07871per Wikidata