Update: Dr. Petrov add some background on this topic.

Original post: Someday the average North Korea will be able to enjoy some of the basic pleasures – like a cold beer after work once in awhile. In the current situation, however, ingredients that go to make beer take away from available food:

Taedonggang beer, named for a river that runs through Pyongyang, is a full-bodied lager a little on the sweet side, with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

A few critics who have sampled it in Pyongyang say it is a highly respectable, but not award winning, brew. Available in Seoul until last year, foreigners say the beer is infinitely superior to the mass-marketed beers in South Korea.

At a Pyongyang hotel for foreigners where goods are overpriced across the board, a 640 ml bottle of Taedonggang sells for half a euro ($0.75). On tap, the beer is a golden to burnt orange in color with a clean, white foam.

[. . .]

Choi said the brewery is a favorite project of the ruling communist party, whose members can afford beer and will make sure the factory receives all the ingredients it needs even though the North cannot produce enough food to feeds it 22 million people.

North Korean defector Jong Su-ban, who came to the South in 2000, said impoverished farmers would scrounge for anything they could find to concoct their own home brews.
“We found corn flower and hops and made something that came out a weird milky color. At least it was fizzy like beer,” he said.

Some background on the factory and production:

In 2000, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il purchased all of the dismantled formerly British-based and now-defunct Ushers Beer Brewery plant and all the necessary brewing equipment and components. The brewery uses German-made computerized brewing control technology and official production of beer started in 2002. With an alcohol content of 5% and a taste significantly bitterer than most Asian beers, indeed resembling a British ale, Taedonggang beer is targeted primarily at domestic consumers, but in 2005 limited export began to South Korea, where it is imported by Vintage Korea, a company based in Dogok, Gangnam, Seoul. In mid-2007, however, availablity of Taedonggang beer in South Korea began to lessen and it is widely believed now that it is no longer being imported into the country, after the brewery increased the price 70% without warning.