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North Korea’s State-Run Airline Becomes Notorious for ‘Mystery Meat’ Burger

North Korea’s State-Run Airline Becomes Notorious for ‘Mystery Meat’ Burger

April 28, 2017
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Airline food can be pretty unappetizing, but North Korea’s stare-run airline takes the cake for serving its passengers only one food item: the Koryo Burger.
Travelers do not know whether it’s undercooked chicken or some kind of mystery meat, but the meal aboard Air Koryo is always served cold on a paper doily.
The Air Koryo burger was the worst example of soft power I’ve ever tasted,” Alec Ash, a Beijing-based writer, told the Los Angeles Times.
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Along with the unidentified piece of meat comes a slice of processed cheese, some shredded cabbage or lettuce and a blob of sweet, brown sauce all stacked in a stale bun.
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The meat was inoffensively dull and, true to the intrigue that surrounds it, even tougher to identify than it was to chew,” Vice journalist Jamie Fullerton said in a review.
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But some passengers can’t get enough of the taste of the Koryo Burger, according to airline review site Skytrax.
Their famous Air Koryo burger was a very tasty snack and I would have eaten another,” one traveler said. “All in all, a very pleasant experience.
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North Korean tour operator Simon Cockerell, who has booked a flight with Air Koryo hundreds of times, claims the patties are actually pretty decent, and that people just flip out when they encounter a foreign dish on a state-run airline.
I think it’s just that North Korea, to tourists, is so inherently sinister and funny at the same time,” he told the LA Times. “That ‘Oh, my God, it’s a burger!’ — that’d be an absurd reaction on any other airline. But on Air Koryo, it’s a normal thing to do.
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