In the late 1980s, regimes across the communist bloc underwent rapid transitions one after another. With the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, North Korea—which had long relied on support from Eastern Bloc socialist nations—plunged into economic chaos and faced an acute food crisis.

Kim Jong-il is said to have set out a new policy for operations against South Korea in 1976, ordering that agents be thoroughly "localized."

Localization did not simply mean learning to speak a foreign language. It meant enabling agents to assume the identities of Japanese, South Koreans, or others and blend into the societies of those countries.

In the 1960s, North Korea sought to advance its domestic construction through the Chollima Movement while simultaneously attempting to overthrow the South Korean government to achieve Korean unification. 

As part of this effort, it executed a plan to establish an underground revolutionary organization in South Korea, instigate a revolution led by workers, peasants, youth, and students, and provide support from the North. 

Following the armistice that brought an end to the active fighting of the Korean War, North Korea rebuilt its devastated land in a remarkably short period, aided by a coalition of communist nations led by the Soviet Union.

In 1956, however, tensions flared between the Soviet Union and China, splintering what had been a collaborative communist bloc. 

With this alliance beginning to fracture, the regime of Kim Il-sung—originally established with robust Soviet backing—started pivoting toward self-reliance. 

After the Korean War armistice, in order to rebuild the devastated country, North Korea received engineers from the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern European countries.

In particular, some Eastern European countries have a coffee-drinking culture, and people from those countries also drank coffee in North Korea.

Rebuild from devastation after the Korean War

 The devastation was close to total. 

Under Japanese rule before World War II, coffee shops operated in Pyongyang, North Korea, and coffee was consumed there. 

However, with the start of the Pacific War, Japan prohibited the import of coffee. Subsequently, under Soviet rule, coffee may have been consumed in some Soviet occupation facilities, but tea was the main beverage. Then came the Korean War. American soldiers on the North Korean front drank coffee on a daily basis.

Start of Korean War

From now on, I talk about Coffee stroy of North Korea.

Formerly , I talked about the series of Korea coffee story.

Korea

But after world war II part, this is about only about South Korea.

In the fact, in Korean Peninsula, one more country exists, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK).

Korea had been a Japanese colony since 1910. 

Taiwan's coffee story after 1990 is essentially a revival narrative.

The island had a substantial coffee industry under Japanese colonial rule — by 1945 production had reached 967 hectares, the historical peak — but after World War II coffee farming declined as tea and other crops took priority.

Through the 1970s and 80s, coffee was a marginal crop, and the modern industry only really took shape from the 1990s onward.

A few forces drove the comeback. 

The most distinctive feature of the post-1990 industry is its close relationship with tea.

Since Starbucks began its operations in Taiwan in 1998, new business models for Taiwanese cafes have emerged.

Cafe chains that appeared in the 1990s before Starbucks, such as Dante Coffee, Ikari Coffee, Barista Coffee, and IS Coffee, were "eat-in" types (sit-down coffee shops).

However, in the 2000s following the arrival of Starbucks, chain stores began to appear aiming for a "take-out centric, high turnover" model in small spaces of about 15 ping (approx. 50 square meters).

Starbucks expanded into markets across Asia between approximately 1996 and 2000.

On this website, I have previously written about Starbucks’ entry into Japan in 1996 and its expansion into China and South Korea in 1999.

The first Starbucks store in Japan opened in Ginza in 1996

Shinsegae Group's Jeong Yongjin's Promotion of Starbucks in Korea

Starbucks, which spread café culture to China