The Way of (Fake) Tea in Korea
Finding the real deal takes a bit more effort than you’d expect.
Tea is harder to come by in Korea than you might think.
That’s a real oddity after China. Over there, you can’t enter an office or a reception area without someone filling a cup with leaves and hot water and shoving it into your hands. Stores have entire little sections devoted to tea (in many varieties and price points) as well as the various herbs, berries and flowers that people mix into tea to make it a little more lively. It’s a common gift, a cultural ritual and a daily staple.
But in Korea? Well, they drink something here, and that something approximates tea in a nebulous sense, but it ain’t camellia sinensis.
The standard beverage I’ve encountered thus far is something termed “brown rice green tea.” That’s not exactly the most mouth-watering sounding drink, is it? This isn’t exactly unique to Korea — there is a similar grain-based hot drink in China — but it’s exceptionally common here. Find something in a store that looks like tea, and…
