For decades, beef occupied a strange place in North Korean food culture: celebrated in state propaganda as part of the country’s proud culinary heritage, but largely absent from ordinary dining tables and reportedly restricted because cattle were too valuable for farm labor.

However, that appears to be changing. 

As North Korea’s economy has stabilized under Kim Jong Un, beef has begun to reappear in cookbooks, television cooking programs, culinary contests and restaurant culture — a shift that points not only to changing diets, but also to evolving ideas about prosperity, tradition and status in North Korean society.