Korea's green tea country — contoured hillside plantations, first-flush mornings, and the most photogenic tea rows in East Asia
Boseong is a county in South Jeolla Province (Jeollanam-do), southern South Korea — Korea's primary green tea producing region, with the Boseong Daehan Dawon plantation covering landscaped hillsides in rows that look, on foggy mornings, like a Korean ink-wash painting made real. The plantation is open year-round; April–May first-flush season is the premium harvest. Boseong green tea (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis, light-steamed processing style) is appreciated by tea specialists as Korea's answer to Japanese gyokuro — lighter, sweeter, and more delicate than Chinese green teas.
Tea cultivation arrived in Korea during the Silla and Goryeo kingdoms (7th–14th centuries CE) via Buddhist monks returning from Tang Dynasty China. The Boseong plantation was established during the Japanese colonial period (1930s) when Japanese agricultural engineers introduced systematic hillside terrace cultivation to Jeollanam-do. Post-independence Korean tea scholars, particularly Choi Beom-sul (1904–1979), worked to reconstruct a distinctly Korean tea culture (dado) separate from the Japanese tea ceremony tradition (chadō). The Boseong Daehan Dawon plantation's terraced hillsides — origi…