Friday, March 29, 2024
FOOD&DRINKTRAVEL

Boseong Green Tea Festival

The Boseong Green Tea Festival is held once a year in May after the first new tea leaves have just been picked. If you like green tea, then May is the time to buy it. Tea made from the new young tea leaves taste the best at this time of year. And the tea fields are at their most beautiful too.

To get to Boseong we took the KTX (Korea’s bullet train) to Gwangju in Jeolla-do. (2 and a half hours from Seoul). Then we stayed the night in Gwangju and got up early next morning to catch the bus to Boseong from Gwangju bus terminal which took 90 minutes.

Waiting at Gwangju bus terminal, two female monks in this picture (below) both balance their hats on the handles of their suitcases while they wait.

boseong tea festival

After arriving in Boseong we had to catch another bus to the green tea fields. During the festival weekend there is a free shuttle bus from the bus station to the venue. I’m going to call this the ‘DISCO BUS’ because it had red, blue, and green lights flashing inside all the way. (It takes about 15 minutes to get there.)

The last time I saw this kind of bus it drove past us in the countryside one evening pumping out music from a karaoke machine inside with the silhouettes of adjummas singing and dancing in the aisles. Adjummas know how to have a good time!

The festival itself is pretty low key – the main event being the green tea itself. Many visitors take selfies with the tea plants. Visitors can experience tea picking and other activities. But I recommend getting there earlier in the festival for this as by the end a lot of the leaves have already been picked!

boseong

There are stalls set up in the white tents at the entrance selling different kinds of tea or snacks –  there was anything from bamboo tea to various types of flower tea. And there were a few fairground type stalls too!

We felt obliged to try some green tea based cuisine. I love green tea ice cream. We also had a bowl of green tea noodle soup. But although the shikdang selling the noodles was extremely busy, the food was a bit bland. We left most of our noodles preferring to stay hungry in the hopes of finding something better later!

LOVELY NEW GREEN TEA

I bought new green tea picked last month. It wasn’t cheap (one box was 77,000 won for 100g, and another was 30,000 won for 40g)

BUT the tea is lovely. You can’t beat new green tea. The lady in the shop explained that the young leaves are still intact and so after making tea the leaves can be dried and used in various dishes such as stir fried with anchovies or in bibimbap. Sounds good to me.

korean green tea

By 2:00 pm we had seen everything and got in line for the disco bus back to Boseong. Back in Gwangju we just had time for dinner before catching the last KTX train back to Seoul.

The Mungyeong Tea Cup Festival is another tea related festival outside Seoul.

And there are some nice tea shops in Seoul such as The Beautiful Tea Museum which is a great place for a quiet cup of tea. Read about tea enthusiasts in Korea here.

3 thoughts on “Boseong Green Tea Festival

  • Hey, that’s a great post about the festival!
    I’ve been to the Hadong green tea festival and I loved it and I’m trying to consider whether to go back to Hadong again this year or to go to Boseong. Was this festival very crowded? Your photos of the tea plantations are beautiful!

    Reply
    • Hi. The festival wasn’t too crowded. I’ve been to Boseong twice but I haven’t been to Hadong so I don’t know what it’s like there. In Boseong there were activities like tea picking, but we arrived on the last day of the festival so all the new leaves had pretty much been picked by then! Still it was fun just to look around. Ideally though, I’d arrive early in the day while it’s quieter and on the first day of the festival if I could! 🙂

      Reply

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