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Few landscapes capture the slow side of Korea like its rolling green tea fields. From the cedar-lined paths of Boseong's Daehan Dawon to the wild mountain plots of Hadong and the volcanic plains of Jeju's Osulloc, Korean tea country offers travelers a thousand years of culture in a single, fragrant cup. This guide walks through the three best tea regions, what makes Korean green tea unique, and how to plan a trip around the May harvest.
Boseong: Korea's Most Photographed Tea Field
Tucked into Jeollanam-do's gentle hills, Boseong is the green tea capital of Korea. The flagship attraction is Daehan Dawon, where rows of tea bushes ripple down a 350-meter hillside lined with tall cedar trees. The plantation is responsible for roughly 40% of Korea's tea production and holds over 5.8 million tea trees on terraced slopes, making it the country's largest and most iconic plantation.
Daehan Dawon has appeared in dramas like Summer Scent and The Legend of the Blue Sea, and its observation deck looks out toward the South Sea on clear days. Admission is 4,000 won for adults, and the plantation opens daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. between March and October.
The May Boseong Green Tea Festival
Every May, Boseong hosts the Boseong Green Tea Festival (Dahyangje), a five-day celebration that coincides with the spring harvest. Visitors can pick tea leaves with farmers, roast them in a wrought-iron caldron, mold their own tea bowls, and walk the so-called Tea Fields Healing Trekking course. The 2026 festival runs May 1 to 5 across the Korean Tea Cultural Park and the surrounding tea fields, with free admission.
For winter visitors, Boseong's Light Festival drapes millions of LEDs across the tea bushes from mid-November through early January, drawing more than 300,000 visitors annually.
Hadong: The Original Wild Tea From 8th-Century Silla
If Boseong is Korea's tea showcase, Hadong is its birthplace. According to historical records, an envoy named Daeryeom returned from Tang China in 828 AD during the reign of King Heungdeok of Silla, and the king ordered the seeds planted on the slopes of Jirisan. Those original bushes still grow wild around Ssanggyesa, a temple founded in 722 AD that is widely considered Korea's first tea farm.
Unlike the manicured rows of Boseong, Hadong's tea grows in wild patches along streams and hillsides, tended by families for generations. UNESCO has recognized the Hadong traditional tea agrosystem as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, and the tea is still hand-picked, sorted on straw mats, scrubbed by hand, and dried on hanji paper, much as it was a thousand years ago.
The Hadong Wild Tea Cultural Festival
Held each May at the Tea Culture Center and the gardens around Ssanggyesa Temple, the Hadong Wild Tea Cultural Festival is the place to taste Korea's oldest tea. The 27th edition included 50 programs over five days, with tea-making classes, walking the Millennium Multi-Fragrance Road, monk-led tea ceremonies at Ssanggyesa, and the Korea's Best Beautiful Tea Place Contest. Reservations are made through the official Hadong County website.
Jeju Osulloc Tea Museum: A Modern Tea Experience
For a more contemporary tea experience, head south to Jeju Island. Osulloc Tea Museum opened in 2001 as Korea's first tea museum, founded by Amorepacific, the conglomerate behind beauty brands like Innisfree, Laneige, and Sulwhasoo. The museum sits beside the Seogwang Tea Garden, Korea's largest single tea plantation, thriving in Jeju's volcanic soil and mild subtropical climate.
Admission is free, and visitors can sample green tea ice cream, matcha tiramisu, hand-pulled tea lattes, and a rotating exhibition of Korean tea history. Next door, the Innisfree Jeju House serves organic green tea desserts overlooking the tea fields, completing what has become one of Jeju's most-visited destinations with roughly two million annual visitors.
What Makes Korean Green Tea Different
Korean green tea is classified by harvest timing rather than region. The earliest pluck, Ujeon, is gathered before the gogu rains in late April and is the rarest grade. Sejak, meaning thin sparrow's tongue, is picked from tender new buds in early May, before ipha (the start of summer). Jakseol, or sparrow's tongue, refers to those young leaves that look like a small bird's tongue when curled.
Two key Korean cultivars produce most of the country's tea. Jaesong is the cold-tolerant cultivar dominant in Boseong, while Nokwoo (often blended with native wild stock) carries the rounder, nuttier profile prized in Hadong. Korean processing usually combines steaming and pan-firing, giving the finished tea a flavor that sits between Japan's grassy sencha and China's roasted longjing.
How to Get There From Seoul
Boseong is the easiest of the three regions to reach by public transport. Take the KTX from Seoul's Yongsan Station to Gwangju Songjeong (about 1 hour 45 minutes), then transfer to a local Mugunghwa train or intercity bus to Boseong (about 1 to 1.5 hours). Direct intercity buses from Seoul's Central City Terminal in Express Bus Terminal also run to Boseong in roughly 5.5 hours.
For Hadong, take the KTX to Suncheon or Jinju and then a local bus to Hadong town (about 4.5 to 5 hours total from Seoul). Jeju is reached by a 1-hour flight from Gimpo or Incheon, with Osulloc accessible by bus 255 or a 40-minute drive from Jeju International Airport.
The New Korean Tea Cafe Boom
Korean tea is having a global moment. Iced matcha drinks have become the fastest-growing category in Korean coffee shops, with some outlets reporting triple-digit year-on-year growth, and Seoul cafes like METCHA Cafe Migliore now build entire menus around domestic Boseong and Hadong leaf. Korean green tea exports have hit record highs as Gen Z embraces matcha lattes, green tea Pepero, and matcha Choco Pies as part of a wider wellness movement.
The upshot for travelers is that you no longer have to drive to Jeollanam-do to taste serious Korean green tea. But there is still no substitute for sipping Sejak in the field where it was picked the same morning, with the scent of cedar and damp earth in the air.
When to Visit and Best Photo Spots
The first two weeks of May, during the Sejak harvest, are unbeatable: the fields are at their brightest green, festivals run in both Boseong and Hadong, and temperatures average a pleasant 18 to 22 degrees Celsius. The Daehan Dawon cedar tree entrance, the observation deck at the top of the hillside, and the Bamboo Forest Path are Boseong's three classic photo spots. In Hadong, head for the stream-side wild bushes below Ssanggyesa Temple, and in Jeju, the Seogwang Tea Garden hedges next to Osulloc's tea-stone building photograph beautifully at golden hour.
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