This year, 2026, marks the 60th anniversary of the start of China's Cultural Revolution.

And during this Cultural Revolution, China also had a unique coffee culture.

■ The Beginning of the Cultural Revolution
After the end of World War II, China, under a communist regime, implemented the "Great Leap Forward" in the late 1950s. This rapid industrialization and agricultural policy, spearheaded by Mao Zedong, ended in a catastrophic failure, resulting in tens of millions of deaths from starvation due to unrealistic production increases and natural disasters.

The First Coffee House on the Chinese Mainland around 1836, a Danish man, Peter Ostrovsky opened the first coffee house "North Wind and the Sea" near the Thirteen Factories(Shisan Hang) trading district in Guangzhou.
Guangzhou was China's only trading port with the West at the time.
In 1757, Emperor Qianlong closed the foreign trade functions of other coastal ports, leaving only the Yuehai Pass in Guangdong as a trading port with the West.
In other words, Guangzhou was the only legitimate foreign trade base open to the West by the Qing dynasty.

EDIYA COFFEE, a low-cost coffee rival to Starbucks, has raised its coffee prices since its founding, reaching around 3,200 won as of 2026.

Mega MGC COFFEE, on the other hand, has emerged as a representative of low-cost coffee.

Starbucks is currently priced higher, EDIYA is mid-priced, and MGC is mid-priced.

MEGA MGC COFFEE is a coffee franchise with roots in Princess Cafe Anhouse, founded by Ha Hyun-woong, and shaved ice chain Pasiya.

Starbucks opened in front of Ewha Womans University in 1999 and was a huge success.
This sparked a cafe boom in Korea as well.

The first Starbucks store opened in Seoul in 1999.
The man who drove Starbucks in Korea was Jeong Yongjin, current Chairman of the Shinsegae Group.

In the early 1990s, newly coined words "orange tribe" were aimed at criticizing excessive consumption amid material prosperity — but when the 1997 foreign exchange crisis dealt a devastating blow to the Korean economy, the atmosphere of the late 1990s changed 180 degrees.
The shock of the crisis dismantled the Orange Tribe culture in the following ways:

The 1997 foreign exchange crisis was a massive event that struck all of Asia.

In the second half of the 20th century, Korean coffee culture was centered around the dabang (tea house). However, in the 1990s, traditional dabangs began to decline,
and coffee shops and cafes began to open more frequently.

In 1987, South Korea's military regime ended, and the country became a democracy with a directly elected president. The 1988 Seoul Olympics symbolized South Korea's economic development.

The liberal atmosphere and economic development brought about by this democratization also brought changes to the Korean coffee industry.

After the Korean War, society gradually stabilized. Instant coffee, brought in by the U.S. military, became widespread, and so did coffee.
This marked the development of Korea's unique "dabang" culture.
In 1956, "Hakrim Chaya" opened in Dongseong-dong, where Seoul National University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences was located.

Shortly after the Japanese colonial period, the Japanese opened a coffee shop (Kissaten) on Jonggok Pass in Myeongdong and began serving coffee.
In Seoul, a two-story salon run by Japanese people called Cheongmokdang appeared, and in 1914, the Joseon Hotel was built.
This served as the highest-class hotel and coffee shop during the Japanese colonial period.
By this time, Western culture had become widespread, and intellectuals who had studied in Japan and the West had established their own cultural sphere, creating ideal conditions for the birth of coffee shops.

Around 1900, while coffee shops were in their infancy in Japan, around 1902, French-German Antoinette Sontag opened the Korean Peninsula's first Western-style hotel, the Sontag Hotel, in Jeongdong, Seoul.
She entered Seoul in 1885 accompanying Karl Ivanovich Bebel, the first Russian ambassador to Korea.
She was said to be Bebel's sister-in-law and served as a liaison between the Russian Legation and the Imperial Court.