I enjoy my weekends out.
You know, letting go, enjoying yourself, downing a couple of drinks—especially, the downing a couple of drinks part.
Do you know what I don’t enjoy, though?
Waking up Monday morning with a splitting headache, my mouth dry, and this inescapable feeling of nausea.
That’s a fancy description for saying ‘hungover.’
Hangovers are Monday’s punishment for letting loose on the weekends.
Well, that and having to actually work on Mondays (8 am college lectures are NOT fun).
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In a perfect world, we’d have alcohol without the repercussions of hangovers.
And apparently, North Korea agrees with me and decided to help create a perfect world (I know, ironic, right?).
So, how was this magical hangover-free alcohol made?
Well, it’s made from ginseng and glutinous rice and has been christened ‘Koryo Alcohol.’
Not too many images from North Korea have been shown to the rest of the world, but it seems like a pretty sober place from what I can see. It doesn’t exactly look like the country with its citizens fighting a hangover and unproductivity on a Monday after a weekend of getting to know alcohol extremely well.
Well, it seems like the kind of place that does this a lot:
And its most fun moments are something like this:
So the hangover-free alcohol (yes, no hangover, no matter how much you drink) came off as a bit of a surprise.
This unique nirvana has been attained from the Taedonggang Foodstuff Factory. The glutinous rice here has been described as “glutinous rice cultivated by an organic farming method in the country” by North Korea’s official newspaper, The Pyongyang Times.
The role of the RICE, in this case, is crucial. It replaces sugar in the manufacturing process – rice is boiled and takes away the bitterness of the ginseng.
(I honestly am not really sure what ginseng is, but the words ‘hangover-free alcohol’ helps me ignore any unpleasant suspicions about ginseng I might have.)
So most importantly, the rice and ginseng make the liquor that is ‘suave and causes no hangover.’
The makers claim that this drink contains 30-40% alcohol by volume.
Consider this – BUDWEISER, everyone’s favorite beer contains 5% of alcohol by volume. We could say that Koryo is thus, technically… Un-Weiser. (Yes, yes, I am, in fact, hilarious.)
Jokes are going around about the real secret behind Koryo’s magic:
It tastes so horrible that you won’t be able to drink enough to actually get hungover.
I hope not. I enjoy the idea of weekends without the punishment of the Monday-morning headache.
Even if it does taste too horrible to actually get hungover on, let’s consider this: This is North Korea, where (I’m assuming) not much can be appreciated.
Citizens probably spend a lot of time appreciating the democracy that’s being denied to them by their delightful dictator. So this is a big deal for the country—almost as big a deal for the country as it is for budding alcoholics.
So let’s take a moment to celebrate Koryo – the magic drink.