What is Morning Crane Tea?
When Arthur K. J. Park began Morning Crane, few outside of Korea had tasted Korean tea. Even today many international tea connoisseurs have little knowledge of the truly exceptional teas produced in Korea. That is why Morning Crane Tea is an educational enterprise and was developed to introduce a wide range of exceptional Korean teas to the world.
One cannot promote tea without providing a taste, so we developed our annual Korean tea procuring event TeaBuy Korea.
Our tea producers were selected after many years of personal research and on the advice of experts on Korean tea. Their selection is based on the exceptional quality of their teas and on the types of teas they produce.
Our goal is to offer truly exceptional Korean teas that represent the wide variety of teas produced in Korea; all at very reasonable prices. We operate with an educational motive instead of a profit one. Each of the teas we offer are organically grown, all are hand-picked and all but a few teas by one producer are hand-made.
We offer teas from every tea-producing area of Korea except Jejudo. We have not yet found a Jejudo tea producer who meets our strict standards.
In the beginning, Morning Crane Tea was operated solely by Arthur K. J. Park. He was limited in the teas he could offer. Minhyeong Lee, who is also deeply interested in promoting Korean culture, made it possible to access the wide variety of artisan teas and is an uncompensated partner.
Shipping has often been an issue as has been a proper web presence to both promote and offer our teas.
Throughout the last decade of our journey the tea connoisseur Eric Glass, owner of the Fragrant Cup and producer of the blog TeaCrimes, has maintained an interest in our work and helped us develop our main website MorngEarthKorea.org. Eric also developed our tea sample sets. Last year Eric joined us officially as both Web Developer and Director of Shipping.
We hope that the three legs of this enterprise, Park, Lee, and Glass, will provide enough balance to strengthen Morning Crane Tea, improve our visibility, our educational presence, improve delivery, and maintain this work for years to come.
Arthur K. J. Park
Founder & Spirit of Morning Crane Tea
Arthur Kyung Jae Park, a third-generation Korean American, is a retired university professor, a potter, and a tea connoisseur. Arthur, who has studied ceramics with Intangible Cultural Treasures, has also been interested in Korean tea for at least 4 decades. Because of his deep interest in Korean culture, he changed the name of his pottery to Morning Earth In 1979. Morning Earth gave rise to Morning Earth Korea which promotes Korean culture with an emphasis on Korean ceramics and Korean tea through his main website MorningEarthKorea.org, many connected websites, and blogs. Morning Earth Tours and Morning Crane Tea are part of that work.
Minhyeong Lee
Partner
Minhyeong Lee has dedicated his career to promoting Korean Arts and culture. As part of that interest, he volunteers his time as the procurement partner at Morning Crane Tea by, as he explains, meeting and promoting “Korea’s hidden masters of Korean tea”. Those masters include tea producers, teaware artists, tea masters, and authors - essentially the breadth and depth of Korean tea. Like Morning Earth Tea’s, his goal is to help preserve and promote their skills internationally. After more than ten years working with Arthur and Morning Crane Tea, Minhyeong is becoming a Korean tea authority in his own right.
Eric F Glass
Forever Student of Tea & Its Wares
After a few years into my tea studies, I settled on two categories of tea to take precedence in my life. Heicha & Korean Teas.
Introduced to Korea's splendor in 2010, I swiftly felt the urge to visit S. Korea's mainland tea-producing areas. Fortunately, I traveled on one of Arthur Park's wonderful tours. My time traveling in the name of tea knowledge, my penchant for tea, tea steeping habits, and choice of teaware changed for life.
My passion for tea has led me to extraordinary places and gained me nonreplaceable, dear friends.
My blog,
TeaCrimes.com, is a satirical look at how to and how not to tea-things-up with a few bits and pieces of vital information along the way.
I also sell a few select Hunan Heicha on my site,
FragrantCup.com
Morning Earth Korea
You may be surprised to know that long before Morning Crane Tea, Arthur developed, and still maintains, the enterprise Morning Earth Korea. Morning Earth Korea promotes Korean Arts and culture through blog posts and cultural tours to Korea. The pandemic took a great toll on the travel part of our work which historically kept us financially solvent. If you would like to contribute to our work, it would be greatly appreciated. Here is a link to Morning Earth Korea where you can learn about that work and find a link where you can contribute. Thank you. MoringEarthKorea.org
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