Stress Relieving Beer from North Korea

[Spitfire]

North Korea launches stress relieving beer

Friday July 03, 2009
ONE News

Communist North Korea's latest launch is sure to cause much frothing ... it is a locally brewed beer that promises drinkers it will help ease stress.

The impoverished state this week launched an advert on state TV for Taedonggang beer, a tipple it has been quietly brewing since shifting an entire brewery it bought in Britain to North Korea.

State TV shows almost no adverts, although programming about local factories is common, so the beer advert is a rare step towards commercialism.

Set to chirpy music and low-quality graphics, the ad opens with a glass filling with draught beer and the slogan: "Pride of Pyongyang."

In the ad aired on Friday, the beer is consumed by a miner dripping with sweat and served to well-attired urban dwellers by attractive young women dressed in traditional Korean clothes.

"It represents the new look of Pyongyang," said the ad, monitored on Friday in Seoul. "It will be a familiar part of our lives."

The brew has been sometimes available in South Korea. It sells at hotels for foreigners in the North Korean capital for around $1.50

Source - tvnz.co.nz

Funny, "The pride of Pyongyang" has a odd ring to it. I know this is in "Foo" but I'm not making it up.

http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/north-kore ... er-2826758

Bizarre! They shipped an entire brewing factory from the UK to North Korea. They are a strange bunch.

[hhfarang]

I thought all beer was stress relieving...

[PeteC]

Many don't even have enough food to eat. Perahps this is a way to make them forget about that if they're drunk all the time. Pete

[charlesh]

Now we know what is fueling their rockets. Thank god the command centre haven't been on a pride of Pyongyang binge - yet!

[DaveT]

I was in North Korea for 6 weeks, albeit back in 1981. I was installing a computerised phototypesetting system so the government could print their propoganda in about 500 different languages.

It was an incredible experience and not something I'd ever want to repeat.

There was one hotel where they put westerners. They did their best, but what a boring place. The hotel did have a bar, on the very top floor, run by a Korean girl who worked in the rice fields all day. She had to stay open until the last westerner staggered out. Often she'd be asleep and we'd have to wake her up to get a drink.

Anyway, during the whole 6 weeks we were there, every night in the bar upstairs, we drank their Korean-brewed beer. It was pretty awful, but did the job. During the whole 6 weeks and what must have been hundreds and hundreds of bottles of beer between us 3 Brits there was not one single bottle that actually stood 100% perpendicular to the table. Their raw materials were awful and the manufacturing process obviously hugely flawed.

The highlight of our week was on a Thursday night when we went to the Russian Embassy for a booze-up with the Ruskie diplomats. They were as peed off as we were!! It was similar for them to being sent to Siberia.

I could write a book on the oppression, propoganda and the mundane things we got up to in order to break the boredom.

One snippet - you could buy one set of postcards to send overseas. Pictures of their military mainly, showing how "powerful" they were. Printed on the bottom of the picture on every single postcard was "smash the US, the sworn enemy of the Korean people".

Charming indeed . . . .

[Khundon1975]

I have to relieve myself (take a leak) after a few beers, so it must be working.