Brit brewery shipped brick-by-brick to North Korea from Wiltshire hailed as ‘top business’ by Kim Jong-un’s regime
KIM Jong-un has raised a glass to the success of a brewery shipped to North Korea brick by brick from a sleepy UK town.
The booze-loving tyrant’s regime hailed the Taedonggang Beer Factory as one of the hermit kingdom’s top ten businesses.
It was praised for its contribution to “the five-year plan for national economic development”, state media said.
Before the millennium, the brewery could be found in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, and was owned by Ushers, a specialist in regional bitters, The Telegraph reported.
But in 2000, North Korea‘s government shelled out £1.5 million for the factory.
The brewery’s 175-year-old building was then dismantled and sent piece by piece to the East Asian country.
Some 20,000 kegs were shipped alongside the bricks, and the Taedonggang Beer Factory opened in Pyongyang in 2002.
The British government only rubber-stamped the sale after it was confirmed the machinery could not be adapted to create chemical weapons.
A delegation of North Koreans also travelled to the UK for several months of training by Gary Todd, who was head brewer at the factory until it closed in Britain.
He said: “I had to effectively give them a crash course in brewing and we spent a lot of time going over the basics, but it seems that they got it because they are up and running over there now.”
Mr Todd said a British journalist brought him a bottle of beer back from North Korea a few years ago – allowing him to take stock of its progress.
He added: “I would have to say that I was pleasantly surprised because I was not sure what they were using for their brewing materials.
“The flavour was pretty good, it was quite nice.”
Beer made at the brewery is stronger than most made in East Asia, with an alcohol content of 5.7 per cent.
State media reported last year that the factory had been “built under the care of chairman Kim Jong-II”, who was at the country’s helm at the time.
He is understood to have picked the site of the brewery on the banks of the Taedong River.
After he died in 2011, his son and heir Kim became a keen supporter and has visited the boozer multiple times.
The dictator is said to “encourage its officials and workers to further improve the flavour and quality of the beer and thus exalt the honour of the factory as one popular among the people”.
Kim – known for his love of imported fine foods and drink – previously launched North Korea’s first ever beer festival.
The beer festival – Kim’s Asian equivalent of Munich’s famous Oktoberfest – took place at a floating restaurant in Pyongyang in 2016.