History of Tea Culture of Our Nation

The great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il said:

"Our people's drinking tea has a long history."

Our country has a long history and tradition of tea culture. Tea culture refers to a comprehensive conception of tea plant cultivation, production and processing of tea leaves, production and utilization of tea things and so on.

In our country, tea plants have been cultivated and spread in many areas ever since the times of the 3 kingdoms and many historical materials such as ‘Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms' clearly show the fact that people of Koguryo, Paekje and Silla enjoyed tea a lot.

And, also, mural paintings of Koguryo tombs involve the scenes of drinking tea and the works of literary men, too, reflect some facts about our tea culture.

Now that the history of artificial cultivation of natural tea plants by humans is supposed to have lasted about 2000 years, the fact that our people drank it in the times of the three kingdoms shows that our nation has a long history of tea culture.

It developed further during the times of Koryo. In those days, a central government department called ‘Tabang' was in charge of all the affairs of production, processing, transportation, sales and consumption of tea.

‘Tabang' means a tea-house. It used to function as a national pharmacy, too, which is closely related with the medical properties of tea.

Since the olden times, tea has been believed to be medically effective for vesical neurosis, edema and so on, and today, it is said to be very good for curing the diseases such as arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and cardiomegaly.

The cultural customs of drinking tea continued in the days of the Feudal Joson Dynasty, too.

In ‘Chronicles of King Sejong'(Geographical Records) and ‘Revised Handbook of Korean Geography' is recorded that presents to the king from southern areas involved various kinds of tea like Tae Tea and Jaksol Tea.

Also among the ceramics of that period, cups of tea covered a very large proportion.

Our nation's tea culture, the history of which is very long across the world like this, further flourished in the Workers' Party era under the warm care of the peerless great leaders.

One day in September, Juche 71(1982), President Kim Il Sung, on his visit to foreign countries, said we could grow tea plants in our country, too, and gave earnest teachings to bring tea plant seedlings in and do the cultivation test well to plant them on our low hills.

Later, he personally conducted planting experiments with the seedlings sent from other countries as a gift and sent them to the cultivation areas, too.

The surprising reality of tea plants overcoming the growing limitation set by the botanical circles of the world and being rooted on Kangryong peninsula is such an eye-opening miracle as blooming flowers on the stone with the great fatherly love of President Kim Il Sung as their nutrients.

The great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il further flourished the new history of our tea culture, whose first page had been written by the president, despite the unprecedented ordeals and trials.

He named the tea produced in our country ‘Unjong Tea' to convey through generations the benevolence of President Kim Il Sung permeated in it.

Till his last year, he was greatly concerned about securing conditions for our people to drink healthy Unjong Tea every day, giving teachings on the temperature and pH value of the water to mix with tea in case it lost its unique taste and fragrance as well as its pharmacological effects.

Today, our people's tea culture is further blooming under the leadership of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un.

With noble intentions to bring the great leaders' lofty wills into reality, the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un looked over the tea plants grown in Kangryong 10 years ago. And he set forth production goals to attain in close years by expand the growing area on an annual basis and improve manuring and cultivation and, also, took benevolent measures to build up a tea drink factory so that it is available for our people at any time wherever they are.

Therefore, today, a great amount of tea leaves are produced in Kanryong County of South Hwanghae Province and Kosong County of Kangwon Province in our country.

Unjong Tea of our country prevents arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and cardiomegaly and improves the function of heart as it is quite rich in healthy ingredients such as caffeine, tannin and vitamins like vitamin C.

Furthermore, it is of great popularity since it efficiently prevents aging and makes our brains fresh and clear as well as being remarkably good for urination, detoxification and anticancer medical treatment.

Today, the tea culture in our country is developing on a higher stage.