North Korea’s leading English language newspaper The Pyongyang Times, which slavishly follows the governing Communist Party line, has revealed to the world that the remote outpost of Stalinism has come up with a 30%-proof alcoholic beverage which won’t give you a hangover.
Yes, that’s right. Described by the Pyongyang Times’ clear-headed reporter as a “noble and suave” tasting drink, Koryo Insam is an amber-coloured, 6-year-old elixir of fermented ginseng and “scorched” rice, with no sugar content at all which packs a punch once drunk, but no lingeringly painful payback the next day.
Reportedly brewed by the Taedonggong Foodstuff factory, tipplers in North Korea’s ruling class have been so impressed with Koryo Insam that they have already awarded it ‘National Scientific and Technological Hit’.
And well may they have done so, for the North Koreans don’t need anymore headaches given the ones they are already nursing over a collapsed economy, a starving population, a diplomatic bust-up with China over their continued programme of staging nuclear bomb tests, their near-permanent state of war with neighbouring South Korea and being friendless in the world.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. (Courtesy: N-TV)
Was it a wicked marketing ploy by isolationist North Korea to boost tourist numbers amongst the drunken proletariat? Or yet more grandstanding boastfulness from its somewhat gauche leader Kim Jong-Un – you know the guy, the roly-poly, toothsome dictator with the bouffant hair-style and dourly podgy face?
Just before you rush off to get your tickets and visas for a Pyongyang stag or hen night, a word of warning from a leading specialist doctor in the effects of alcohol and anti-ageing, Dr Sarah Tonks, who has also written a guide to hangover cures.
“This is simply not possible – when you drink alcohol, it breaks into certain products which then cause the hangover effect. The main cause is acetaldehyde which is produced by the metabolic system when alcohol is introduced into the body, and there is no way that can be avoided,” warned Dr Tonks, of the Lovely Clinic in London.
“Your liver will break down and de-toxify the acetaldehyde with anti-oxidant Glutathione, but the liver only has so much of it at any one time and runs out very quickly, so needs to manufacture more, so meanwhile the alcohol will cause the hangover effect,” said Dr Tonks.
Given that North Korea has previously claimed to have made a vaccine to prevent HIV/AIDS and Ebola, we advise taking the doctor’s advice on this occasion.
