Please read first my archive articles: Ready the barrels for the first Beer Festival of Pyongyang!
And: Photo album: Pyongyang Taedonggang Beer Festival
North Korea isn’t your average tour destination. It’s certainly not the type of place you’d expect to get sloshed with locals while sampling locally-brewed (and, in our opinion, very tasty) craft beers.
Yet, in 2016, Pyongyang announced they’d be holding the first ever “Taedonggang Beer Festival”, where locals and international travellers alike could mingle, drink, eat and enjoy some awesome entertainment. The festival began during Liberation Day in August and ran nightly until National Day in early September. Hundreds of people packed the festival each night, with around 45,000 people attending the event in total.
The festival itself featured seven varieties of Taedonggang beer on tap, including beer flights with all 7 to sample. Nightly entertainment included classic DPRK song & dance performances, as well as various contests with festival attendees- with one particular favourite being the beer-chugging competitions. Pyongyang’s local dinner cruise boat was also there to take attendees on 20-minute rides down the Taedong River. Souvenirs for purchase included beer mugs, teacups, coasters, shirts, and more.
Perhaps the highlight of the festival is the opportunity for foreign visitors to freely mingle with locals. Tourists often found themselves being pulled into free seats at tables to engage in conversation, take photos and share drinks with locals attending the event. The Taedonggang Beer Festival truly proved itself as not only a fun and interesting event, but a great opportunity for engagement and interaction between North Koreans and attendees from foreign countries.
Feeling left out? Not to worry! With the huge success of the festival in 2016, the Taedonggang Beer Festival will return in 2017 and is expected to be bigger and better than last year’s festival.
The tour will run nightly from Victory Day (July 27th) until the end of August. With the huge success of last year’s beer festival and the massive amount of people who attended, we expect this year’s festival to run longer than last year’s in order to accommodate the growing enthusiasm for the event.
Source: Young Pioneer Tours