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Early 1990s
After the 1988 Seoul Olympics ended, South Korean
became able to travel abroad freely. As a result, the num-
ber of people who have experienced foreign culture has
soared since then. Also, there was a growing interest in
espresso coffee. Thus, those staffs that had experienced
espresso at the hotels or large importers of kitchenwares
in the late 1980s left the company to open their own cafe
rather than a hotel-style upscale coffee shop. However,
they had a lot of difficulties of purchasing many devices
in order to open a coffee shop at the time. Typically, it
cost from KRW 60 million (USD 60,000) to KRW 200
million (USD 200,000) in inflation-adjusted terms only
for purchasing necessary machines. Therefore, some of
them who were financially tightened purchased a semi-
automatic espresso machine that was relatively cheaper
than the high-end expensive automatic coffee machine. At
the time when they had no proper understanding of the
machine, they believed that the automatic machine used
in large companies such as hotel should be expensive since
a sufficient amount of knowledge about the Western or it was the best machine. Eventually, there was this irony
Italian espresso coffee or machine. As a result, they were that the semi-automatic espresso machine was imported
forced to depend on the importers of kitchenwares from due to the demand of those people who could not afford
Switzerland and Germany. They received the proposals to purchase the automatic machine. At the time, the semi-
from them on the automatic coffee machine and they automatic machine consisted of a brewer brewing a bulk
installed it accordingly. At this time, such large automatic of coffee, an espresso-brewing group and a unit of steam
coffee machines as EGRO, FRANKE and WMF were in- and hot water. The most prominent example was Carimali
troduced in South Korea. However, they posed a new Combi. Unfortunately, people had no accurate information
challenging task even to those people who were already about espresso. Thus, the porter filter of a semi-automatic
enjoying coffee. It was because they were a new kind of machine was often misused in a majority of the coffee
coffee from those coffees that they had been enjoying. shops for the reason that it did not have a specifically
People believed that the white substance floating (“crema” useful function. Most coffee shops received roasted coffee
as we know today) on machine-made coffee was some- from Doutor and Jardin for drip-type coffee of Japanese
thing that they should not eat. Thus, they waited until this style. A majority thereof were a crushed type rather than
white substance vanished completely. Also, they mixed
other ingredients in it. As such, people had resistance or
curiosity for machine-made coffee. Furthermore, those
foreign visitors to South Korea created a new paradigm
of drinking coffee. Some people who found it stylish
from those foreigners sipping coffee in a small cup tried
to mimic the foreigners. However, they soon found that
they could not drink it because it was too sour. In the
end, people chose the method of drinking soft coffee by
grinding coffee beans thickly in order to create coffee of
hand drip style with the automatic coffee machine. It was
the era when people had only the methodological role
since they had no understanding about the menu made
out of the automatic coffee machine or other machines.
Nonetheless, some people in the industrial world found
a niche market that could become a huge business op-
portunity with coffee with the introduction of automatic
coffee machine.

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