North Korea has launched its first beer festival, aimed at showcasing local brews and promoting the government’s Taedonggang Beer Factory.

The so-called Oktoberfest of the North, which launched last week, is taking place opposite an illuminated floating restaurant in the capital city, Pyongyang, and tour operators say the event is proving popular with foreign visitors and local drinkers.

Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, which has so far brought 100 visitors to the festival, said: “All [our customers] have enjoyed it greatly with the highlights being the interaction with a large number of local people who are also enjoying themselves.

“[It’s] a testament to the universal power of a couple of cold beers on a warm evening to make people get along with each other.”

Served by waiters in white and blue uniforms, drinkers are being offered an array of local beers, including North Korea’s highest quality white rice and dark beers as well as several brews from the Taedonggang factory, founded by the DPRK’s former leader, Kim Jong-il.

“The festival is a great opportunity to show off our world-famous Taedonggang beer widely and improve its competitiveness,” the director of the General Bureau of Public Service, Choe Yong-nam, was reported as saying at the opening ceremony.

Aerial view of the Pyongyang beer festival. Photograph: Uriminzokkiri/NK News

Launched primarily for Pyongyang citizens, the festival follows steps made by the brewery to improve access to its now famous product in other parts of the country.

“Up to a couple of years ago, Taedonggang was actually very hard to find outside of Pyongyang,” says Andray Abrahamian, a regular visitor to the North and an honorary fellow at Macquarie University in Sydney. “Now basically, you get it nationwide, so they do have a national distribution system.”

With an alcohol content of 5% and a taste resembling British ale, Taedonggang beer has been described by the New York Times as a “full-bodied lager a little on the sweet side, with a slightly bitter aftertaste” and “one of the highest-quality beers on the [Korean] peninsula for several years”.

Revellers enjoy the local beers on offer at the event. Photograph: Uriminzokkiri/NK News

The festival is being conducted despite the toughest sanctions to be imposed on the regime. The UN security council cracked down on the North after Pyongyang conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and launched a long-range rocket in February.



Korean Central Television was quick to use the festival to attack the country’s critics critics. “The Pyongyang Taedonggang beer festival shows our people’s lives filled with happiness and optimism, building up a people’s paradise and a highly civilised socialist country, while smashing the US and its followers’ heinous moves to isolate and stifle the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” a KCTV newsreader said.

But Cockerell suggested the festival was a simple marketing ploy: “I would simply ascribe this [festival] to market forces and the desire to expand the brand awareness, plus making profit.”

The 20-day event has a capacity of more than 700 people, according to Cockerell, with visitors invited to drink Taedonggang beer from 7pm until midnight.



A second beer festival is scheduled to take place in September in conjunction with the Wonsan air show.