Korea's tradition of tea is different from that of China and Japan.
The tea ceremony is so important that Korea has a National Tea Master. Yon Han is the primary contact for the Korea Club at the Diamond Sutra Recitation Group (DSRG) which provided a delicious lunch and amazing fashion show for us on our opening meeting on May 5. Yon's mother is a tea master. She knows Hwang Byungki, the traditional Korean musician who will be playing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 2, our second meeting. All the Dahn Yoga Masters plan to attend. In fact, the concert is considered so important that Regional Director Dahn Hwa cancelled an important regional meeting to allow the Masters to attend! Hwang Byungki wrote a tune for the tea club hosted by Yon's mother!
Franchia is a Korean tea house at 12 Park Avenue in Manhattan and is the sister restaurant of HanGawi.
See instructions on making tea at: http://www.franchia.com/howto.htm
See the history of the Korean tea ceremony at:
http://www.kccla.org/html/class_teadetail.asp
http://www.teamuse.com/article_020601.html
http://www.teainfusion.com/culture/korean-tea-ceremony.html
The Korean tea ceremony is a unique form of tea ceremony practiced in Korea for more than a thousand years. The Korean tea ceremony originates from the tea ceremony in China. The chief element of the Korean tea ceremony is the ease and naturalness of enjoying tea within an easy formal setting. Tea ceremonies are now being revived in Korea as a way to find relaxation and harmony in the fast-paced new Korean culture, and continuing in the long tradition of intangible Korean art.
Central to the Korean approach to tea is an easy and natural coherence, with fewer formal rituals, fewer absolutes, greater freedom for relaxation, and more creativity in enjoying a wider variety of teas, services, and conversation. This leads to a wider variance of teahouse design, tea garden entries and gardens, different use and styles of teawares, and regional variations in choice of tea, choice of cakes and biscuits and snacks, seasonal and temporal variations, and the acoustic and visual ambiance of Korean teahouses.
For more information, see: http://www.san-shin.org/KGTea-1.html
The Tao of Tea 
The Korean Way of Tea by Brother Anthony of Taize and Hong Kyeong-hee is available on Amazon.com
See the article Korean Tea Is Green, Chinese Tea Is Not at: http://www.easterntea.com/tea/koreantea.htm
The following selection was excerpted from: http://www.easterntea.com/tea/panyaro.htm
Panyaro -- the Korean Way of Tea
In Japan, the Way of Tea has become a very rigidly codified Tea Ceremony of immense complexity. Commercial institutes instruct housewives in each minute gesture at great expense, and the spontaneity of simple human companionship that the samurai valued in the ceremony is submerged under layers of ritualism. In Korea, this has not happened. Koreans feel that it is very important to remain natural while drinking tea together. At first, the different steps may seem complicated, but it does not take long to master them and for the drinking of tea, alone or with others, to become a part of life.
There is no end to the list of benefits attaching to the drinking of green tea. It is good for you in almost every way, unless you drink too much of it on an empty stomach, when it can be irritating. Yet more than its health benefits, there is the dimension related to the Spirit of Tea, a quasi-religious dimension typified by the name of the tea made by Chae Won-hwa:Panya-ro, the 'Dew of Enlightening Wisdom'. In Korea, the tea revival initiated by the Venerable Hyo Dang has had a great impact. The Venerable Hyo Dang, Ch'oi Pom-sul, might be considered to be "the Ch'o Ui of the 20th century," for he wrote the first full-length study of tea to be published in modern Korea and taught many people about the various aspects of tea. He was a remarkable man: active in the Independence Movement, he founded several schools and a university after 1945, as well as being the teacher of virtually all the leading figures in the modern Korean tea revival. There are now tea rooms in most cities and even quite small towns, there are innumerable tea study groups and research centres, several reviews exist consecrated entirely to the various aspects of tea culture and the Way of Tea. There are a number of very famous tea masters, who give regular lectures.
One of the most important of these is Chae Won-hwa. She studied history at Yonsei University and soon became interested in the history of Korean thought. It was while she was preparing her final graduation thesis that she first met the Venerable Hyo Dang. In the ten years that followed, she learned from him every detail of the Way of Tea as well as the method of making the tea he called Panyaro (The Dew of Wisdom). After his death in 1979, she remained as his recognized successor. In 1981, she launched a study association devoted to the Panyaro Way of Tea with a small number of like-minded associates. In 1983, the Panyaro Institute for the Promotion of the Way of Tea (see below) was launched in a room in Seoul's Insa-dong and since then, she has instructed hundreds of persons in the Way, including all the leading Korean masters of tea. Several years ago she went back to Yonsei University and did a Master's degree, writing her dissertation about Tea.
She is recognized as Great Tea Master and was honored by being included among the six hundred exemplary and notable citizens of Seoul whose names were placed in a time capsule buried on Namsan on November 29, 1994 to mark the 600th anniversary of the founding of the Choson Dynasty with Hanyang (now Seoul) as its capital. In another four hundred years, the capsule is destined to be opened and the citizens recalled, on the 1000th anniversary of the city. We cannot know what will be the standing of tea in the world of that time, but it is good that one of modern Korea's greatest tea masters should be among those whose names will be transmitted to distant posterity.
(An English translation of the Institute's own text)
The Panyaro Institute for the Promotion of the Way of Tea was founded to perpetuate the lifelong work of the celebrated Korean Tea Master, the Venerable Hyodang, who devoted some sixty years of his life to a study of the teachings of the great Korean spiritual master Wonhyo and to the elaboration of methods of using tea in meditation. The Venerable Hyodang contributed to the culture of tea in three major ways: First, he published the first Korean book consecrated to the Way of Tea, "The Korean Way of Tea", a work that continues to inspire readers interested in our tea culture. In that book, Master Hyodang expressed the fruit of a whole lifetime's research and experience. Second, he transmitted the particular method of making the green tea known as Panyaro. Third, he founded the first association of Koreans interested in the study of tea, the "Korean Association for the Way of Tea". That association was not destined to outlive him, but it performed a vital role in the launching of the present-day association which pursues similar goals.
The Venerable Hyodang was also the first to give ordinary readers an awareness of the significance of the life of the Venerable Ch'o-ui, the early 19th century tea master, through a series of articles published in a popular newspaper. It may not be too much to say that, just as the Venerable Ch'o-ui led the revival of interest in tea in his time, so the Venerable Hyodang led the modern revival. Thanks to the fruition of a favorable karma, Chae Won-hwa was enabled to assist the Venerable Hyodang in all these undertakings. The Venerable Hyodang departed from this world on July 10, 1979 and after a few years spent immersed in other activities, in 1981 Chae Won-hwa was able to launch a study-association devoted to the "Panyaro Way of Tea" with a small number of like-minded associates. On July 2, 1983, she founded the Panyaro Institute for the Promotion of the Way of Tea and since then she has had the privilege of meeting and instructing several hundred persons in this Way.
The Venerable Hyodang always used to insist that tea was to be drunk quite naturally, in the course of daily life, and should not be made the subject of unnecessary constraints. Many people simply came and went in the course of the years, but in November 1995 Chae Won-hwa established a formal graduation ceremony for those who had completed the full course of study. Such ceremonies are now held each year. It is her hope that each one can discover that the Way is not some remote idea, but a reality hidden very close by, in the midst of the activities of ordinary life.
This page was last updated on: 05/26/2007.
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This site was last updated 05/26/07