North Korea on a bun: What the legendary Koryo Burger tells us about the isolated nation, and ourselves

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(A man who picked up the phone at Air Koryo’s Beijing office confirmed that the airline “normally” serves burgers. He could not confirm the type of meat).

From 1994 to 1998, North Korea was ravaged by famine. Hundreds of thousands of people starved to death, according to best estimates. People ate bark and leaves to survive.

Although malnutrition remains common in North Korea, starvation is now rare. Since the Communist country’s public food distribution system collapsed in the mid-1990s, its citizens — with the state’s tacit approval — have turned to the gray market to survive. Supermarkets have proliferated — as have restaurants. Some sell Western meals.

“If you have a growing capitalist economy, somebody is buying jets and diamonds, and somebody is eating a nice protein-rich meal every day,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul. “Of course they are not buying diamonds constantly, and a protein-rich meal is still beyond the means of most people — even if the diet of the masses is improving fast.”

Zhao Bin, 35, a businessman from the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, said that on his first visit to Pyongyang, in 2003, the electricity cut out every night. “The second time I went was almost 12 years later, and I think North Korea has developed a lot, and people’s lives have improved dramatically.”

Pyongyang’s restaurant offerings now include fried chicken, pizza, sushi — and yes, burgers. A burger, he said, costs about $1.50, and a 9-inch pizza costs less than $15. “My impression of having foreign food [at Pyongyang’s restaurants] is that the service is exceptional, and the ingredients are all very fresh — unlike China, where there’s so much low-quality meat and vegetables.”

He gave the Koryo Burger high marks. “I think the meat they use is thicker and better than the stuff you get at KFC or McDonald’s,” he said.

North Korea’s secrecy is, in itself, no secret. Reporting trips are tightly controlled, and defector accounts often are impossible to verify. In the absence of information, rumors proliferate — and the wackier they are, the more rapidly they spread.

In 2012, international media reported that North Korea claimed to “discover” the existence of unicorns. In 2014, they reported that North Korea was forcing Pyongyang’s men to adopt leader Kim Jong Un’s distinctive hairstyle. Both stories were false; both went massively viral.

The West’s fascination with the Koryo Burger, Cockerell said, springs from that same sense of intrigue.

“People think it’s incongruous for the North Koreans to be eating a burger because it’s this archetypal Western dish,” he said. “But one, [the Koryo Burger] is an insult to Western food, and two, putting meat inside bread is hardly exclusive to the West.”

Air Koryo is known for its perennial features: its aging Russian-made planes, its drab interiors, its propensity to blare militaristic propaganda mid-flight.

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But like North Korea itself, its culinary offerings have changed over time. For years, the airline served the burgers only on outbound flights from Pyongyang, Cockerell said. On inbound flights, it offered a full meal, including curry rice and side dishes.

“Then, for some reason, presumably budget, they switched to burger in both directions,” he said. At one time, Air Koryo also served “a sort of sandwich wrapped in a Danish pastry.” That lasted a few months; then it was back to the burger.

The burger itself, he said, has improved in recent years. It tastes much the way it looks: bready, chewy and bland. And for those who don’t eat meat, Air Koryo also offers a vegetarian option — the same burger, but with a tomato slice instead of meat. “The only vegetarian option used to be to not eat it, or to take the meat substance out,” Cockerell said.

And last week, when Koryo Tours brought several tourists to Pyongyang for its annual marathon, their flight from Shanghai served a full meal, including chicken with white sauce, canned fruit, mixed pork, fried fish with bread crumbs and a small cake.

Many of the tour participants joked they were disappointed not to receive a Koryo Burger on the flight, said Rich Beal, the company’s tour manager. But they had no reason to fret. On their return flight two days later, the burgers were back.

jonathan.kaiman@latimes.com