Jo Pil-je (Yonhap)
Jo Pil-je (Yonhap)

Jo Pil-je, former vice chairman of Dongsuh Foods and the executive widely credited with creating South Korea’s instant “coffee mix,” died Monday at 101.

Dongsuh Foods said Jo died at about 10:08 a.m. His funeral is being held at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, and he will be buried in his hometown of Haman-gun, South Gyeongsang Province.

Born in 1925, Jo studied aviation and shipbuilding at Seoul National University and began his career in the 1950s at the state-run Korea Shipbuilding Corp., the predecessor of what is now HJ Shipbuilding & Construction.

He joined Dongsuh Foods in 1974 as vice president, six years after the company’s founding, and took charge of product development. He also led construction of the company’s Incheon plant for Frima, its powdered coffee creamer.

Jo is best known for developing coffee mix sticks, small packets combining coffee, sugar and powdered creamer. While instant coffee had already existed for decades, the product made it possible for consumers to prepare a milk-based coffee simply by adding hot water.

“One of the employees in quality control came up with the idea of mixing coffee, Frima and sugar so that consumers could just add water and drink coffee,” Jo wrote in his 2017 memoir. “That simple idea set everything in motion, and we immediately began development.”

“My only regret is that we did not trademark the name ‘coffee mix’ at the time,” he wrote.

Jo also played a central role in launching Maxim, Dongsuh’s flagship coffee mix brand. After becoming company president in 1980, he introduced the product using a freeze-drying technology designed to preserve the aroma of coffee.

Maxim went on to dominate Korea’s coffee mix market, which holds a market share of more than 80 percent.

Under Jo’s leadership, Dongsuh also became one of the earlier South Korean food companies to expand overseas, exporting products such as Frima to several Southeast Asian countries.

Jo served as vice chairman from 1982 to 1986. During that period, he established the company’s research and development center, which later introduced products including honey-based items.


minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com