March 19, 2024
Evergreen

What’s for dinner? The distinctive North Korean menu

Many who visit North Korea find a surprising variety of choices available

Communism and food have a complex relationship.

Often coming to power in countries with rich culinary traditions and customs, Marxism-Leninism’s opposition to the “bourgeois decadence” of the past – as well as the economic austerity it often brings – meant that citizens usually lived Spartan lives where just getting by, not fine dining, is the priority, often in stark contrast with the country’s ruling elites.

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