Choco Pies Viva Le Revolution

When ever we think of North Korea we always conjure up an image of a society so divorced from reality that normalcy can just seem plain odd.  After all people are people not matter their country of origin.

Yet, are view of the DPRK is usually of the doughboy in chief with his really bad hair cut showing his audience how its really done.   Remember normal does happen in North Korea.


But there is this from Rupert Winfield-Hays from the BBC:

But the most striking image I have seen recently was of a North Korean family in a village near the Chinese border watching a South Korean TV drama on a smuggled DVD.
The trade in smuggled South Korean DVDs is huge. And it can mean only one thing - North Koreans are not nearly as isolated as we tend to think they are.
While I was in Seoul I met a number of North Korean defectors. What one of them told me left me open mouthed in amazement. It all relates to Choco Pies.
What are Choco Pies? Well, they are round chocolate snacks filled with marshmallow - a bit like a Wagon Wheel - but Korean.

  So, what in the name of meta Jesus do choco pies have to do with North Korea?

South Korean companies were banned from paying their North Korean employees cash bonuses. So over the years they started paying them with various food products, including Choco Pies.
But instead of eating them the employees took their Choco Pies back to Pyongyang and started selling them on the black market for three to four times their original price. North Koreans, it seems, cannot get enough of the capitalist confectionery.

The revolution may not be televised but the infiltration of choco pies has begun.

All hail the choco pie