Daejak
Daejak is the latest and coarsest grade in Korea's spring green-tea ladder, plucked after the more prized ujeon, sejak and jungjak harvests have passed. The leaves are larger and more mature, giving a bolder, more robust and slightly more astringent cup than the delicate early pluckings. The variable that matters most is understanding where it sits in that ladder: daejak is the everyday, forgiving end, not the connoisseur's tea.
Daejak leaf is visibly larger, flatter and more open than the tight little buds of ujeon or sejak, reflecting its later harvest. Expect a deeper green-to-olive color, a more vegetal and robust aroma, and a cup with more body, more briskness and a touch more astringency. Quality daejak is still clean, sweet underneath and free of scorched or stale notes; poor daejak is harshly bitter, flat or dusty. Korean greens are mostly hand-finished in the pan-fired (deokkeum) tradition, so a well-made daejak should taste roasted-sweet rather than raw. It is graded by pluck timing rather than region, so the season is the key fact.
Korea's three main green-tea regions are Hadong (Gyeongsangnam-do), Boseong (Jeollanam-do) and Jeju Island, and daejak is made across all of them. The grade names (ujeon, sejak, jungjak, daejak) track the harvest calendar against the solar terms: daejak is the late pluck, gathered from roughly late May onward, once the leaves have grown large. Most premium Korean green is pan-fired by hand in the Hadong style, though some is steamed; the late, mature leaf of daejak is robust enough to take that firing and still drink smooth.
Western: 80°C, 3 g per 200 ml, 1-2 minutes, 2-3 infusions; the mature leaf tolerates slightly hotter water than the early grades, which want 70-75°C. Korean practice often pours water into a cooling bowl (sukwu) first to drop the temperature before brewing. Daejak is forgiving, so it is a good grade to learn Korean green on without wasting precious early-harvest leaf.
€10-25 (about $11-27) per 100 g for typical daejak, well below the steep prices that early ujeon commands. It is the value end of the Korean green ladder.
Prices reviewed June 2026
Ujeon (Pre-Grain-Rain)
The earliest, most delicate and most expensive pluck, the opposite end of the same grading ladder.
Sejak
The early small-leaf pluck, finer and sweeter than the larger, later-picked daejak.
Jungjak
The mid-harvest grade sitting just above daejak, more tender and slightly less robust.
Bancha
The Japanese parallel: a later-harvest, coarser-leaf everyday green that plays the same workhorse role.
Korea grades its green tea by when it is picked relative to Gogu (grain rain, around April 20), not by region or cultivar; daejak sits at the far end of that calendar, which is why it is both the cheapest and the most robust of the spring grades.