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Park Ji-hyun, an office worker, starts the day with a cup of coffee; and after lunch, she goes to the coffee house with her colleagues for another.
Park consumes slightly more than the average for a Korean worker — 1.5 cups per day — as coffee has become one of the most preferred drinks here.
There is about a one-in-three chance that she drinks coffee from Vietnam, a one in eight chance that it is from Brazil, and a 10 percent chance that it is Colombian.
According to the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA), Koreans are consuming on average one-and-a-half cups of coffee daily. Most of the coffee consumed here is imported from Southeast Asia and Latin America.
“Koreans consume around 300 tons of coffee beans a day, which is equivalent to 37 million cups of espresso. It means each of the economically active population of 24 million is consuming 1.5 cups of coffee daily,” an official at the KFDA explained.
He advised that one should pay heed not to take more than the recommended 400 milligrams of caffeine daily. A cup of espresso has around 100 milligrams.
The data showed that Korea imports coffee from 83 countries. Vietnam provided 38 percent, followed by Brazil at 15 percent and Colombia at 11 percent.
In 2010 Brazil was the biggest coffee producer in the world, with annual production of 2.9 million tons. Vietnam was second with 1.1 million tons, followed by Indonesia, Colombia and India. Vietnamese coffee beans are often used for instant coffee, which is still the most popular type of coffee among Koreans.
Imports totaled 123,029 tons last year, 1.6 times that of 2001. The cost, meanwhile, grew by 8 times to $668 million from $80 million 11 years ago.
Korea imports most of its coffee, or 88 percent, as beans. While these mostly came from Southeast Asia and Latin America, processed coffee, such as instant, liquid or roasted coffee, was mainly imported from the United States and Italy.
The bean imports registered 108,918 tons last year, costing $412 million. The administration said that the increase of cafes and coffee shops pulled up the coffee bean import.
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