South Koreans are poisoned by coffee.

Source: Global Times

[Global Times Special Correspondent Cui Jietong to South Korea]"Cui, look!" Looking along the finger of South Korea's "East Asia Daily" reporter Zhu Shenghe, the reporter saw that three coffee shops were close together (as pictured), and the lights reflected the rainy night more brightly. "There are so many coffee shops, we are all poisoned!" he said.

The place where we stood was a small square near Gangnam City Plaza Hotel, Seocho-gu, Seoul. Walking down the streets of Seoul, just look around and you will find at least one coffee shop. According to a survey published by the International Business Times in 2014, coffee has surpassed kimchi, South Korea's national dish, as the country's most consumed food. On average, Koreans drink coffee 12.2 times a week, kimchi, which has been a Korean food since the 16th century, eats an average of 11.9 times a week, and rice 6.9 times a week.

"If you stay in Seoul for a few more days, you'll find that during lunch, colleagues in the company basically don't talk to each other. After lunch, they get up and leave without saying a word. Then they go straight to the coffee shop, where they chat and discuss things. This is a tacit understanding and a habit." Li Meilian, who studied in Seoul, told the Global Times reporter,"When I first came to Seoul a few years ago, I didn't drink coffee. I watched others drink coffee, but you couldn't melt it without drinking coffee. Now I'm drinking too."

Coffee was first introduced to Korea in the late 19th century and became popular during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. American soldiers brought instant coffee to Korea during the Korean War in the 1950s, which made coffee more popular. However, coffee shops blossomed into a culture only in the last 20 years. American coffee chain giant Starbucks opened its first store in Seoul in 1999 at South Korea's prestigious Ewha Women's University, and by 2014 it had nearly 300 stores. Daniel Schweikendieck, a professor at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, commented that "walking down the street with a Starbucks cup becomes a status symbol, like carrying a designer bag on your arm." Coffee has become a class status indicator in South Korea, leading to the emergence of cultural phenomena such as "bean paste girls," girls who choose not to eat meat in order to save money for luxury goods, because bean paste is a very cheap food in Korea. In the 2012 Korean divine song Gangnam Style, the singer ironically sang: Where is the beautiful girl who knows how to enjoy a cup of coffee freedom?

Want to live in Seoul? Thirteen things you have to get used to." Coffee shops rank ahead of kimchi, metal chopsticks, soju, sitting on the floor and bowing, although the latter have long been South Korea's image symbol in the world's impression, on the list of seoulist.com, which specializes in promoting Seoul to foreigners. In fact, South Korea has included coffee as part of its culture. In many familiar Korean dramas, cafes can be seen everywhere. Some Korean coffee chains have opened their stores to Paris, New York, Beijing and other parts of the world by taking advantage of the "Korean Wave". It is understood that there are 284 Starbucks stores in Seoul, ranking first in the world, which dwarfs New York in the United States. No one knows how long South Korea's coffee craze will last. Fierce market competition, many Korean coffee shop owners began to choose low-cost strategy, the market increasingly fierce fight.