Korean coffee culture prizes competition credentials the way others prize estate names. Momos Coffee roasts competition-grade coffee on Busan's Yeongdo island, from a 2019 World Barista Champion's direct-trade roastery, with traceability back to each farm lot. Busan takes its coffee every bit as seriously as it takes its harbor. Coffee Myungga became Korea's first specialty-coffee roaster, founded in 1990 by barista champion An Myeong-gyu. O'sulloc farms Jeju volcanic-soil green tea from three organic estates, a house founded in 1979 by Suh Sung-hwan. Single origin comes before the blend here; pride of place usually earns it.
Momos Coffee roasts on Busan's Yeongdo island, led by Jeongsoo Pak and Jooyeon Jeon. It sells whole beans, drip bags and cold brew alongside home-cafe gear and subscription plans.
Best for Competition-grade coffee from a 2019 World Barista Champion's direct-trade roastery
Momos Coffee began in 2007 as a 140-square-foot take-out coffee bar converted from a restaurant storeroom in Busan's Yeongdo district, founded by Hyunki Lee alongside Jooyeon Jeon, Jungsoo Park and Jueun Jeong. The shop pivoted toward specialty coffee after 2009 and has bought direct since 2011, traveling to origin and building relationships with more than 150 partner farms across over 20 countries. In 2019, co-founder Jooyeon Jeon won the World Barista Championship — the first Korean champion, the first winner from outside the capital region, and only the second woman to take the title in the competition's history. The brand added further expertise in 2021 when Charlie Chu, that year's World Cup Tasters Champion, joined to lead quality control, the same year Momos opened its Yeongdo roastery in a converted warehouse where roasting is visible from the counter. Momos now runs four stores across Busan and appears on the World's Best Coffee Shops list. Its menu still centers on the milk-and-espresso drinks that built the original stand's following, alongside single origins roasted on site and sold as retail bags. The line from a converted storeroom to a globally ranked roastery runs through direct trade and competition-level technique, not scale.
A Busan specialty-coffee roastery that began in a 140-square-foot storage room in 2007 and now direct-trades with over 150 producers across 16 countries. Its team includes South Korea's first World Barista Champion.
Best for Direct-trade specialty coffee from a Busan roastery
Momos began in 2007 as four friends -- Hyunki Lee, Jooyeon Jeon, Jungsoo Park and Jueun Jeong -- converting a roughly 140-square-foot restaurant storage room in Yeongdo, Busan, into a take-out coffee bar. Two years later they encountered specialty coffee and rebuilt the business around it, and since 2011 have practiced direct trade, traveling to origin to buy from producers rather than through importers; the company now works with more than 150 producers across 16 countries. The investment in sourcing has paid off in competition results rarely seen outside far larger operations: co-founder Jooyeon Jeon became the first Korean to win the World Barista Championship in 2019, and teammate Kyeongha Chu followed with the 2021 World Cup Tasters Championship. Sprudge has named Momos a World's Notable Roaster, and the company placed 22nd on the World's 100 Best Coffee Shops list. What started as a 140-square-foot storage room now runs four stores across Busan -- the flagship among them -- built entirely around beans the founders selected and priced themselves at farm level. For a city not usually associated with third-wave coffee, Momos has done as much as any single business to put Busan on the specialty map, competition medals included.
Founded in 1990 by barista champion An Myung-gyu, Coffee Myungga is one of the earliest specialty-coffee roasters in Korea and runs a barista training program with Kyungpook National University. It roasts single-origin and blended beans and operates several Daegu cafes, including the museum-style La Finca in Dalseong-gun.
Best for Korea's first specialty-coffee roaster, founded 1990 by barista champion An Myeong-gyu
Coffee Myungga dates its founding to 1990, when An Myeong-gyu and Jung Eun-kyung began roasting in Daegu at a time when Korea barely had a specialty-coffee category to belong to. The company now claims that founding moment outright, describing itself as the beginning of Korean specialty coffee — a claim that rests less on marketing than on more than 30 years of continuous roasting under the same name.
That longevity shows up in how deliberately the company has built out its footprint since. Rather than scale fast, Coffee Myungga runs a franchise system it frames as quality over quantity, aiming to make each location feel individually cared for rather than a stamped-out copy. Several Daegu cafes carry the name, including the museum-style La Finca location in Dalseong-gun, which doubles as a showcase for the roastery's history rather than a plain retail counter.
The company also formalized its early-mover status into education, running a barista training program in partnership with Kyungpook National University — passing the founders' three decades of roasting knowledge to a new generation rather than keeping it in-house. Its product range spans micro lots, single origins, blends, drip bags and green beans for other roasters, headquartered in Gyeongsan in North Gyeongsang Province, a working base for what is now one of the country's longest-running names in specialty coffee.
Park Ichu, a pioneer of Korean hand-drip coffee, established Bohemian in Gangneung after first roasting at his Seoul shop in 1988. The roastery and cafe sell house-roasted beans and pour classic drip preparations from a hillside setting.
California's third-wave coffee pioneer in Seongsu — minimalist design, exceptional pour-overs, and a Seoul-specific menu. The industrial space fits perfectly in the converted factory district.
Best for Pour-over coffee and minimalist café design in Seongsu
DADOTEA sells artisanal, single-origin Korean tea and matcha -- green, yellow, oolong, black, oxidized and herbal -- alongside single-cultivar ceremonial matcha and handcrafted porcelain, buncheong, bamboo and glass teaware made by Korean artists Moomooyo and Sorangyo.
Daurim sells handmade Korean ceramics -- teapots, tea sets, teacups, sake cups, tea bowls and moon jars -- including buncheong and onggi pieces, along with wooden tea accessories such as a juniper-wood stand for tea ceremony use.
Innisfree's Myeongdong flagship at 15 Myeongdong-gil in Jung-gu, Seoul, presents the Jeju Island skincare brand launched in 2000 under its Innisfree The Isle concept. Skin analysis and sets sold only there are part of the concept. Green tea serums and creams lead a range that also runs to orchid and black tea, and to volcanic cleansers. The brand belongs to Amorepacific, and its Empty Bottle campaign recycles used containers.
Best for Green-tea, volcanic-clay and orchid skincare
Innisfree is a Korean skincare brand launched in 2000 that builds its formulas around ingredients from Jeju Island. It combines them with what it calls Korean skin science to make products it describes as accessible and gentle as well as effective. Green tea lines sit at the centre of the range. Alongside them are black tea and orchid creams, a cherry blossom jelly cream and volcanic cleansers. Its Myeongdong store at 15 Myeongdong-gil in Jung-gu, Seoul, is the brand's flagship. It is presented since a rebrand as Innisfree The Isle, a concept that leans on higher-strength actives such as retinol and vitamin C while keeping the Jeju sourcing. The flagship offers skin analysis and sets not sold elsewhere. The brand has long marketed to teenagers and young women who favour eco-friendly products. Its Empty Bottle campaign has taken back more than 35 million used containers for recycling. Innisfree belongs to Amorepacific, whose US arm runs the brand's American online store. That store is certified cruelty-free by PETA and offers recycling through TerraCycle.
O'sulloc Tea House in Insadong, at 45-1 Insadong-gil in Jongno-gu, brings the Jeju tea brand's museum format to Seoul. It serves green tea grown on Jeju alongside desserts made with drinking-grade sejak leaf. The shaved ice is frozen milk, the red bean is blended with chestnut, and the ice cream uses the same green tea powder. Packaged teas and teaware are also sold on site.
Best for Jeju green tea and sejak-grade tea desserts near Anguk station
The Boseong Tea Producers' Association, formed in 2005 by around 600 local farmers, sells green tea graded by harvest, ujeon, sejak and later flushes, from Boseong, source of more than 40% of South Korea's green tea.
Best for Boseong Tea Producers' Association, formed in 2005 by around 600 local farmers
Boseong county has grown tea for well over 1,600 years and today supplies more than 40% of South Korea's green tea, making it the country's largest tea-growing region; Boseong green tea was also the first Korean agricultural product to receive geographical-indication status. The Boseong Tea Producers' Association was formed in 2005 by roughly 600 local farmers, based in Boseong-eup along a road named Nokcha-ro, Korean for 'green tea road', to act as a collective bridge between individual growers and regional tea policy.
The county's humid, rainy climate is central to that reputation, producing the aroma and taste that distinguish Boseong-grown leaf, and its best-known feature is the terraced hillside plantations that carpet the mountainsides, most famously at the Daehan Dawon estate, first developed in the 1930s and rebuilt in 1957 after wartime destruction. The cooperative's own shop sells nokcha graded by harvest timing, from the earliest-picked ujeon and the slightly later sejak through subsequent flushes, alongside powdered green tea and blended teas, giving buyers a way to taste the difference a few weeks of picking date makes across leaf from the same terraced hills.
Coffee Cupper runs a coffee museum and working farm in the hills of Wangsan-myeon, one of the few places coffee trees are grown in South Korea. Visitors tour and taste on site, and the shop sells roasted beans and cold-brew Dutch coffee.
Best for Coffee Cupper runs a coffee museum and working farm in the hills
Coffee Cupper's museum and farm complex in Wangsan-myeon, on the outskirts of Gangneung, opened in March 2000, founded by a married couple, Kim Jun-yeong and Choi Geum-jeong, whose personal collecting of coffee-related artifacts grew into a public museum. Their collection now runs to more than 20,000 pieces, displayed across a four-building complex: a coffee history and culture exhibition hall, a roaster-and-grinder exhibition hall, a coffee-mechanism exhibition hall, and an on-site coffee tree farm, with a fifth building used as a hands-on experience space. Gangneung's location on Korea's east coast, in one of the country's few climates suited to growing coffee trees outdoors, makes the working farm itself a rarity — most Korean coffee businesses import green beans rather than growing any domestically. Visitors can tour the farm and taste coffee grown and roasted on site, and the shop sells roasted beans as well as a Dutch-style cold-brew coffee. A second Coffee Cupper museum was later opened near Gangneung's Gyeongpo area, extending the brand to a second, more centrally located site while the original Wangsan complex retains the working farm.
Founded in 1979 by Suh Sung-hwan, O'sulloc farms the Dolsongi, Seogwang and Hannam estates on Jeju's volcanic soil, USDA and IFOAM organic certified since 2010. Its teas have taken prizes at international competitions in Beijing and Japan, including a 1999 Beijing prize recorded in O'sulloc's history.
Best for Jeju volcanic-soil green tea from three organic estates
O'sulloc traces to 1979, when Suh Sung-hwan — who also founded the wider AmorePacific Group — set out to revive Korean tea culture by developing tea fields on Jeju Island's volcanic soil, starting with the Dolsongi field before adding the Seogwang and Hannam estates. Seogwang, once barren land turned into an organic plantation, carries its own historical footnote as the exile home of the calligrapher Kim Jeong-hui; Hannam, in Seogwipo, runs both green and black tea production out of a modern factory built for roughly 646 tons of annual output. The company launched its Sulloc-Cha tea brand in 1980 and opened the O'sulloc Tea Museum on Jeju in 2001, letting visitors walk the tea fields and see production up close rather than encountering the brand only through packaged retail. O'sulloc's fields earned USDA National Organic Program and IFOAM organic certification in 2010, and the company has entered — and been recognized at — major international tea competitions in Beijing and Japan. O'sulloc became a wholly owned, independently structured AmorePacific subsidiary in 2020, decades after starting as one founder's attempt to rebuild a tea-growing tradition that had largely disappeared from Jeju.
Founded in 2002, Terarosa roasts specialty coffee at its factory in Gujeong-myeon outside Gangneung, where a cavernous cafe pours single origins from Ethiopia to Panama. The roastery sells whole beans, drip bags and its Sleepy Cat decaf line.
Best for Single-origin coffee from Ethiopia to Panama, whole beans, drip bags
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗
Visit official site ↗