Communism and food have a complex relationship.

Often coming to power in countries with rich culinary traditions and customs, Marxism-Leninism’s opposition to the “bourgeois decadence” of the past – as well as the economic austerity it often brings – meant that citizens usually lived Spartan lives where just getting by, not fine dining, is the priority, often in stark contrast with the country’s ruling elites.

Nowhere is this more true than in North Korea, where the country’s leadership has always eaten well while encouraging its citizenship to make do with less. At the height of the devastating famine of the