Korean Specialty Coffee: How It Grew

Korean Coffee · Part 5

Korean specialty coffee grew from a small circle of competitors into an industry with hundreds of roasteries. What changed first was supply, and what changed slowest was taste.

01 Green coffee was the first bottleneck

Around 2010 there were only a handful of importers to buy from.

If you roasted in Korea then, your options were counted on two hands. You took what those companies had brought in that season, and a coffee you liked might simply not exist here the following year.

Today there are more than twice as many.

Small importers now bring in single lots, competition lots and microlots, and a roaster in a provincial city can order the same coffee as one in Seoul. Nothing else in the last fifteen years changed the work as much as that did.

Equipment followed the same curve.

Roasters, grinders and measuring tools that had to be imported at painful cost became ordinary purchases, and Korean manufacturers began building their own.

02 It started with competitors

The first roasting classes were full of people who competed.

When our own classes opened, most of the room was national competitors, judges, and people preparing to become one or the other. Roasting was a thing you learned in order to win something, not a thing a cafe owner studied to run a business.

That shaped the whole scene.

Competition rewards precision, and the people who brought roasting into Korea came from that world. Korean coffee education is measurement-heavy for that reason, and the habit spread outward from a small group.

The room looks different now.

The same classes are filled with cafe owners, second-career students and people who want to roast for their own shop. The knowledge moved from the competition stage into ordinary businesses, which is what maturity looks like.

03 Taste moved more slowly than the industry

Acidity still has to be explained.

Customers who enjoy a bright, fruit-forward coffee have increased steadily, and there is a real audience for it now that did not exist fifteen years ago. It is still the smaller audience.

Nutty and chocolatey remains the mainstream.

Ask most Korean customers what good coffee tastes like and the answer is gosohan, a word covering the nutty, toasted, faintly sweet character of sesame or grain. A roaster who ignores that is roasting for a magazine rather than for the people in front of them.

The iced habit reinforces it.

Delicate acidity thins out under ice and water. The drink most people order pushes roasters toward body and sweetness whatever the trend magazines say.

04 Roughly how it unfolded

The stages overlap, but the order is clear enough.

Supply, then skill, then audience.

Period	What was happening	Who was involved
Around 2010	Few importers, limited green coffee, imported equipment	A small circle of enthusiasts and competitors
Mid 2010s	Roasteries open, competitions gain attention	Competitors turning into owners and teachers
Late 2010s	Importers multiply, microlots become available	Independent roasters outside Seoul
2020s	Market splits between low price and specialty	Cafe owners learning to roast for themselves

The interesting part is what did not change.

Supply and skill caught up with anywhere in the world within about a decade. Preference moved at its own pace, and it is still moving.

First Penguin Coffee Company Roasting since 2010 and teaching since 2016, from our own roasting workshop in Korea. Our coffees are listed under Beans in the top menu. Enquiries: 010-3444-1721

Next: ordering coffee in Korea, for visitors.