KOREAN CULTURE DEVELOPMENT IS THE WAY TO CREATE NEW CULTURES
By Kim Dong-jinSource: The Associated Press | March 28, 2018 09:04:02With the arrival of the first wave of coffee-loving Koreans, a whole new landscape has opened up for coffee culture.
The country’s largest coffee shop chain, Coffee Bean Holdings, plans to open a new coffee cafe next month in Pyongyang.
The establishment is named ‘Coffee House’ and will be the first of its kind in the capital, the company said on its website.
It will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week, on Monday to Friday.
“The idea is to encourage the consumption of coffee in a place where the coffee culture is not as well known,” a spokesperson for the company told the AP.
The cafe will serve up an assortment of brews, from lattes and iced teas to latte mugs, tea and espresso drinks.
Coffeeshop.com said the cafe will be available for customers to sample as they go.
It’s unclear if customers will have to pay.
The company said that the cafe would be run by the Coffee Bean Development Institute, a non-profit organisation founded in 2014.
The institute has also been producing coffee, it said.
The new coffee-consuming Koreans will also be able to enjoy Korean culture, said Lee Jae-hyun, a spokesman for the Coffee House Development Institute.
Lee said that coffee-drinking was a way to help build a new Korean culture.
He also said that he hoped that the coffee will become a cultural touchstone for the city, and that tourists would stop visiting it for the time being.
“We will do a lot of cultural events, and we want to be a big part of it,” he said.
Culture Minister Cho Myung-seok said that people of Korean descent should be able taste Korean coffee, and added that the new cafe was a step toward that goal.
The Korea Tourism Organization said that Coffee House will open in December.
The Coffee House is one of several new businesses to open in Pyongyang in the past year.
In January, the government announced that the country would open two coffee shops for tourists and locals to sample.
And in July, the Korean Tourism Organization announced that there would be a new Starbucks for foreigners to visit.