Gogigyeopbbang With Fries
Thursday, July 15, 2004
(More culinary dispatches from the leftovers of the Communist bloc.)
Maybe the North Koreans have finally realized the wisdom of market-capitalism; or maybe they've just gotten tired of eating boiled grass and pine needles.
Either way, the famished mad-Marxist hermit kingdom has decided, after decades of perpetual starvation and visceral anti-Americanism, to introduce to its people the ultimate culinary symbol of imperialist America: the hamburger.
Lately, Kim Jong-il has been heard touting the nutritional qualities of the Gogigyeopbbang (the Korean word for hamburger), and has even gone so far as to advocate publicly on behalf of that most quintessential of American foods, the
Ladies and Gentleman, the revolution is underway.
North Korea introduces hamburger to starving people
After five decades denouncing the United States and its capitalist system, North Korea has adopted one of America's best-known inventions - the hamburger.
In the past, Pyongyang propaganda denounced South Koreans for eating bread, the food of the American imperialists, instead of rice. But North Korean media have now acknowledged that the mass production of hamburgers was ordered personally by Kim Jong-il, the secretive Stalinist nation's dictator, as long ago as 2000.
"I have made up my mind to feed quality bread and French fries to university students, professors and researchers, even if we are in hardship," he is reported to have said.
North Korea has renamed the burger the gogigyeopbbang which means "double bread with meat". The first North Koreans supplied with hamburgers were students at Kim il-Sung University, where the party elite are educated and indoctrinated in the regime's philosophy of juche, or self-reliance.
Failed economic policies and years of natural disasters have left North Korea unable to feed its population.
However, aid workers say that Pyongyang's privileged party workers can enjoy their pick of restaurants serving everything from shark-fin soup and sushi to hot dogs.
SEE ALSO:
Let Them Eat Pine Needles!
Kremlin Fried Chicken
Pancakes for Pinkos