A Short History of Tea in Korean Culture

Long before green tea became a global skincare ingredient, it was a daily habit across East Asia — and in Korea it grew roots deep enough that the plant is part of the country's cultural furniture. The story explains a lot about why Camellia sinensis feels so at home in Korean products today.

The arrival

Tea is believed to have reached the Korean peninsula from China during the Silla period, sometime in the seventh century or thereabouts. Buddhist monks, who traveled between the two countries, are usually credited as carriers — tea helped them stay awake through meditation, and monasteries became the first centers of cultivation.

By the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392), tea had moved well beyond the temple. Court documents and poems describe formal tea offerings and gatherings; the drink was woven into ceremony, hospitality, and quiet evenings alike.

Boseong and the green heart

Ask a Korean person where the country's most famous green tea comes from and you will hear one word: Boseong. The county's terraced fields — thousands of rows of tea bushes climbing a green hillside — have been harvested since at least the Joseon dynasty. The region's cool, misty climate produces leaves prized for their delicacy, and the fields themselves are now a national landmark.

The same leaf that filled ceremonial bowls in Goryeo temples now fills toners and essences on Seoul's beauty shelves.

From teacup to skincare shelf

What links the teahouse to the bathroom cabinet is a way of thinking: the leaf as everyday care, not luxury. Drinking tea was never only about flavor — it was moderation, ritual, attentiveness. Korean skincare absorbed that spirit. When the industry began formulating with green tea in the 1990s and 2000s, it was drawing on an ingredient the culture had already made familiar, trustworthy, and ordinary in the best sense.

That ordinariness is the point. No one in Boseong calls green tea a miracle. It is simply part of life — which, as the evidence-based view of green tea for skin shows, is not far from how the ingredient deserves to be treated in skincare too.