One of Asia’s newest breweries has just opened in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known as North Korea.
According to Korean Central News Agency, the DPRK state news agency, Rason Brewery was “inaugurated with due ceremony” on November 29th by the “Chairman of the Rason City Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, officials in the city and employees of the brewery.”
The brewery is located in the city of Rason, a Special Economic Zone in the country’s northeast that shares a border Russia & China.
Rason is reported to have been constructed to brew ‘Tumangang Beer’, which claims to be a “high quality” beer intended for local consumption in the city.
Image Source: KCNA
While thousands of citizens have been quarantined as suspected COVID-19 cases and those violating restrictions to the counter pandemic killed (including a South Korean fisheries officer), North Korea’s government has largely sought to portray a sense of ‘business as usual’ with no formally acknowledged COVID-19 cases.
KCNA reports that the brewery is state of the art, despite wide-ranging sanctions on industrial equipment: “all its production processes ranging from bottle washing to packaging are put on an automated and streamlined basis”.
Image Source: KCNA
Interestingly, Rason Brewery is not the only recent arrival in North Korean beer scene.
According to the Voice of Korea, another DPRK’s broadcaster, the ‘Munchon Foodstuff Factory’ in Kangwon Province has recently “built beer and sausage production processes with its own efforts and technology” and also has begun to brew makgeolli, a Korean variant of rice wine.
