38°59′41″N 125°48′25″E / 38.99472°N 125.80694°E / 38.99472; 125.80694

A Taedonggang bottle cap

The Taedonggang Brewing Company (Taedonggang, Chosongul: 대동강 맥주) is a state-owned North Korean beer brewery company that brews the Taedonggang beer. The brewery is located in East Pyongyang and has facilities of tens of thousands of square meters.[1]

History

In 2000, the North Korean Government decided to acquire a brewery. At that point having good relationships with the West, via connections to Germany the Government of North Korea bought the intact and still in place brewery plant of the closed Ushers of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England for £1.5M via broker Uwe Oehms. Concerned it could be used for chemical weapons production, after assurances, Peter Ward, of brewing company Thomas Hardy Brewing and Packaging bought the plant, and arranged for a team from North Korea to travel to Trowbridge to dismantle it.[2] Groundbreaking of the Taedonggang Beer Factory took place on 15 January 2000.[3] Reinstalled and operational from 2002, the brewery uses German-made computerized brewing control technology. The brewery is located in the Sadong District of Pyongyang.[4]

Taedonggang beer is named after the Taedong River, which runs through the center of Pyongyang.

On July 3, 2009, a commercial for the product was broadcast on state-run Korean Central Television in a rare move, as there are very few advertisements on North Korean television.[5][6] It has been broadcast three times in all.[7]

640ml Taedonggang
500ml bottle of Taedonggang

Products

The Taedonggang Brewing Company is mostly known outside the DPRK as the producer of the beer known as Taedonggang beer, which is the flagship beer of the companies. However the brewery also produces a brand of draught, a brand of black beer and a rice beer.[8]


See also

References

  1. ↑ Choe Kwang-ho (March 2014). "Popular Taedonggang Beer". Democratic People's Republic of Korea. No. 699. p. 24. ISSN 1727-9208.
  2. ↑ "How Ushers' Trowbridge brewery is now the toast of North Korea". Wiltshire Times. 2009-07-05. Retrieved 2009-11-21.
  3. ↑ Yonhap 2002, p. 264.
  4. ↑ Yonhap 2002, p. 365.
  5. ↑ In apparent first, North Korea airs beer commercial on state TV. Los Angeles Times. July 3, 2009
  6. ↑ North Korea launches beer advert. BBC News Online. July 3, 2009
  7. ↑ N.Korea Ends Experiment with TV Commercials. The Chosun Ilbo. November 9, 2009
  8. ↑ "Taedonggang Beer". Korea News Service. June 25, 2009. Archived from the original on 13 October 2013. Retrieved 22 January 2014.

Works cited

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