Where Have All the Tea Makers Gone?

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South Korea’s artisan tea makers are losing their youth to big city dreams – but with a global rise in organic tea sales, Jiri Mountain’s organic tea could become more sought-after than ever.

By Josh Doyle

Poll a group of young people on their dream jobs, and you’ll be unlikely to find many aspiring tea harvesters.

This spells trouble for a certain valley in South Korea, where organic, premium quality tea making has been the region’s lifeblood for a millennium. On the slopes of Jiri Mountain, artisan tea makers passed down their trade like sword makers in medieval Japan. But the current generation is more interested in careers in the city than toiling in the tea fields. Many of the valley’s youth are moving to urban centers and air-conditioned skyscrapers, leaving a gap in the valley’s workforce and putting the region’s future at risk. And yet with sales in organic tea rising around the globe, this eager generation might be leaving at just the wrong time.

Health conscious consumers are making a return to tea, and driving growth for consumption in Korea and abroad. According to MarketWatch, global tea markets are set to hit $21.33 billion in 2024, up from $14.45 billion in 2016, showing a combined annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5%. At the forefront of this growth are premium ready-to-drink (RTD) products, offering consumers a solution to busy but health-conscious lifestyles. And according to Karin Gerlach, director of marketing at Tea of a Kind, consumers are becoming not only more health-conscious but also more eco-conscious, showing interest in sustainably sourced products. With a rising interest in organic, sustainable sources like Jiri Mountain, growers who stick to the trade may find themselves at the center of high demand.

“Do you see any livestock here? There are no cows, no pigs, no chickens farmed in the valley. This is the cleanest valley in Korea,” says Jong-gyun Kim, c.e.o. of Dong Cheon Tea, explaining what makes Hadong such a mecca for premium hand-made tea. With no livestock in the valley and a ban on pesticides, this is organic farming at its purest.

And this is exactly what a new breed of tea drinkers are looking for. In 2016 PepsiCo responded to market demand for more organic products by releasing their Pure Leaf Tea House Collection. Coca-Cola has had success with their own organic products after acquiring Honest Tea. Brands like ITO EN Tea are finding the switch to certified organic crucial to their image as a premium brand. Tea drinkers have spoken, and with both loose leaf and RTD, organic is in demand.

But as Gerlach points out, consumers want more than just organic ingredients. Today’s tea drinkers are thirsty for sustainable farming practices and enticing origin stories. As more consumers look to the origins of their tea, regions like Jiri Mountain are becoming more sought after. But this region’s organic farming isn’t a response to sudden consumer demand – it’s been going on for more than 1000 years.

When people first tried to etch out a living here 1,200 years ago, opportunities were scarce. The mountains are too steep for rice cultivation, and heavy monsoons tended to wash away most other crops. So, the locals relied on the tea plant, with its deep roots, and learned to work in harmony with the mountain. After 1,000 years of permaculture, the tea plants on Jiri Mountain are not only resilient but diverse. They reproduce via insects and wind, bringing genetic diversity to each field. This explains why there are still giant moss-covered boulders in the tea fields. Any profit-minded farmer would remove them and put in another ten bushes. But there’s a balance here, and local growers are not about to disturb it for a small bump in profit. That’s why they call the tea grown here ‘wild tea,’ and why the United Nations named Jiri tea farming a ‘Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System,’ along with the floating gardens of Bangladesh and traditional wasabi farming in Japan.

But tradition here may be a double-edged sword. Growers have maintained a high-quality product with an attractive origin story by clinging to the same practices for centuries. But this also means they’ve been reluctant to adapt to market trends. Kim is helping growers find new profits by tapping into the variety of green tea products on the market today. 

“Most of the tea ends up as powder,” Kim says of the tea at his factory. Growers in the area give him a portion of their harvest, after selling what they can for top-dollar to private buyers and cafés. “It goes into latte’s, green tea ice cream, green tea cakes. They put green tea in everything now.”

This may not be what Jiri Mountain’s tea artisan ancestors had in mind. Growers here prefer to sell their teas direct and for high value in a mom & pop approach. Sangyong Lee, one of the areas award winning growers, is a perfect example of this. When I visited his café and workshop his phone rang for orders with the frequency of a Hollywood agent, instead of a man tucked away in a valley. Yet he still refuses to sell to department stores, dealing only with cafés and individual customers and selling for top dollar.

But in terms of a great origin story and eco-friendly practices, Jiri Mountain is hard to beat. For enterprising tea sommeliers or hotels looking to bring their customers something memorable, greens and blacks from this valley might be worth a look. While growers are averse to department stores, they are not against shipping overseas.

And the quality is proven by industry professionals who return year after year to stock up on the latest batch from favored growers. Stephen Carroll runs the Tea Guild of Australia and leads educational workshops in India and around the world. He’s been frequenting the Wild Tea Festival in Hadong for several years now and returns each year because the quality and experience can’t be matched.

“Flavor, processing, history, and tea culture,” Carroll says, commenting on what sets this valley and its tea makers apart. “The way they grow, pick, harvest, and then the processing of it, makes [the region’s tea] very smooth, very gentle.” He contrasts this with Indian and Chinese tea, where larger leaves are often used to create a stronger flavor. But for Korean artisan tea makers, a mellow, easy to drink tea is often the goal. This is why they focus on using only buds and small leaves, and why hand-made is the standard.

Carroll has found a specific tea maker in the area whom he now buys from in bulk, getting large orders shipped to Australia. He’s impressed by the quality of the tea produced here, as well as the stories of family lineage. But he also sees the potential business pitfalls facing a trade so reliant on nature and traditional practices. He relayed the story of one tea maker’s daughter who was meant to take over the family trade but moved to Seoul for a career in IT.

“She said ‘I’m not going to spend my life in a valley,’” Carroll said. Other issues also plague a valley that has to accept the cards nature plays. His supplier lost nearly 50% of their crop this year due to an unusually harsh winter. But Hadong has fared better than large Korean plantations in Boseong and Jeju island, Jong-gyun Kim tells me, since Hadong valley is the warmest place in the country, and Jiri Mountain creates a natural barrier to winds.

Protections like these, plus a growing interest in the power of organic tea and inspiring origin stories, could encourage some of today’s youth to stay. If they do, they could realize new profits by becoming more open to international customers. Marketed properly, Jiri Mountain tea could become an attractive option in the premium organic space.