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AmorePacific publishes Millennial Culture of Korean Tea through its admirable strains for Korean traditional green tea over Last 3 Decades.

Company 2010-07-02

AMOREPACIFIC Corp. (President and CEO, Suh Kyung-bae) has dedicated its efforts to producing better tea on the basis of a deep affection for Korean traditional tea culture over last 3 decades and has also played a leading role in propagating and popularizing tea and tea culture nationwide. Now, it gets to formulated arrangement and compilation works of Korean traditional tea culture. AmorePacific Academic & Cultural Foundation (AACF), a foundation established under the sponsorship of AmorePacific, has published ‘Millennial Culture of Korean Tea Vol. 1 & 2 (Dolbegae Publ. Co.) as a collection of various old writings on Korean traditional tea culture. 
The Millennial Culture of Korean Tea (Vol. 1 & 2) is published with a view to give a general overview about the long history of Korean traditional tea culture and its possible development in future. It contains modern translations of old writings on the tea culture in the late Joseon Dynasty, and consists of two volumes (lyrics and prose). 
This book introduces poems, prose, letters and more written by many tea enthusiasts in the late Joseon Dynasty (including Chusa Jeong-hee Kim , Choeui Seonsa, Dasan Yak-yong Jeong and other tea lovers who were well known for enjoying tea). It implies cultural and industrial aspects of Korean traditional tea, such as efficacy, drinking habits, cultivation and distribution. In the commemoration of publication, AmorePacific will open a seasonal event for purchasers of this book at online or offline bookstores during this July: By lottery, 50 purchasers will be randomized to get Premium Sulloc Tea Set (equivalent to 40 thousand won) and 200 purchasers will get O'sulloc Gift Token (equivalent to 10 thousand won). 
The ‘Millennial Culture of Korean Tea’ contains a historical select list of modern Korean translated literatures on Korean traditional tea ranging from the age of Three Kindoms to modern and contemporary Korea (translated by academic specialists in interpreting Korean traditional classics which were written in classical Chinese). Thus, this book will contribute to further understanding about Korean tea culture for not only researchers but also public readers. Korean traditional tea has such a long origin as it was allegedly traced back to Heo Hwang-ok, an ancient Indian princess who got married to King Kim Suro, the founder of an ancient kingdom called Gaya in southern Korean peninsula. It has been settled as a cultural code in Korea as well as in China and Japan over a long tradition. However, old Korean literatures on traditional tea culture have been re-arranged and introduced only by the individual efforts of some tea enthusiasts. That is why those literatures have been neither sufficient nor correct enough for historical investigation specialists to rely on as a part of reference materials, and have been very difficult for common people to approach as a liberal reference. 
Seon-ju Mun, literary and culture director, the AmorePacific Museum of Art, said, “Traditionally, Korean tea has handed down a variety and wealth of cultural heritages around royal families and scholar classes, but such a long tradition is unfortunately not so much little known to modern Koreans. In addition to foundation of O'sulloc Tea Museum as the first Korean tea museum, this publication work is another part of efforts made by AmorePacific to publicize exquisite quality of Korean tea and discover and conserve good Korean tea culture.” 
In order to compile a series of literatures on traditional tea ranging from the age of Three Kindoms to the late Joseon Dynasty and modern Korea, AACF plans to release follow-up volumes compiling a comprehensive collection of literatures on traditional tea, such as personal anthologies (including tea lyrics), government historical compilations (e.g. ‘the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty’, ‘the History of Koryeo’, ‘the Chronicle of Three Kindoms’, special collections (e.g. ‘Imwon Gyeongjaeji’(林園經濟志), ‘Seongho Saseol’(星湖僿設), ‘Eumcheongsa’(陰晴史), etc) and other undiscovered literatures. 
AmorePacific, the only cosmetics maker around the world which cultures its own tea garden, has reclaimed and cultivated about 3.31 km2 of wasteland into green tea garden over last 3 decades since the first half of 1970's in an earnest effort to revive Korean tea culture. Afterwards, AmorePacific has tried to provide customers with exquisite quality of Korean green tea by marketing its ‘Sulloc’ brand as a byword of green tea in Korea, and has also collected a list of literatures related to Korean tea in 2001 to open O'sulloc Tea Museum as the first tea museum in Jeju Island. This way, it has steadily worked for promotion and conservation of Korean tea culture. Moreover, it is estimated that AmorePacific's seollok tea garden collects and absorbs enormous amount of CO2 as much as 28,500 tons per annum, which exceeds the amount of CO2 emission (24,009 tons per annum) from the overall process of AmorePacific's production and logistics. As demonstrated above, AmorePacific creates added values with Korean green tea and plays a leading role of eco-friendly global company faithfully.