Tweet of the Day: Do North Koreans Drink Coffee?

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평양의 커피와 차 ‘문화전쟁’
Pyeongyang’s ‘Culture War’ between Coffee and Tea

주성하기자
By Joo Seong-Ha

2015년03월02일 오전 8시58분
March 2nd, 2015 8:58 A.M.

남쪽에 처음 와서 ‘남이나 북이나 사람 사는 게 똑같구나’ 하는 생각이 들었던 때는 쉬는 시간이었다.
When I first came to the South, it was when people were at rest when I would find myself thinking, “Oh, the life of people in the South is just like the life of people in the North.”

직장 한쪽 구석에 몰려가 남자끼리 담배 연기를 내뿜으며 “아무개는 오늘 왜 저러는 거야” “아무개 상사는 또 왜 저런대” 하며 뒷소리를 하는 것은 남북이 어찌 그리 똑같은지….
They crowd together in one corner at work, and the men – amongst one another – exhale clouds of cigarette smoke while dishing rumors and gossip, saying things like, “What’s up with that guy today,” or, “I hear Chief What’s-His-Name is at it again for some reason,” in such a way that the South seemed somehow just like the North.

하지만 남쪽에 와서 ‘진일보’ 한 것이 있으니 왼손에 커피가 담긴 종이컵이 들려 있었다는 점이었다.
However, in the South there was one difference that stood out, and it was the paper cups full of coffee which were held in everyone’s left hands.

처음 몇 년 동안 나는 200원짜리 자판기 커피가 제일 맛있었다. 하지만 이제는 비싼 커피를 코와 혀끝이 알아본다. 나를 이렇게 만든 건 환경적 영향이 크다고 볼 수 있다.
At first, for several years, my favorite coffee was the stuff that you get from the vending machines for 200 won. But by now, my nose and my tongue recognize expensive coffee. With my having been made this way, one can see the great influence that my [new] environment has had upon me.

동아일보 주변만 봐도 언젠가부터 유명 브랜드 커피숍 수십 개가 생겨났다. 그렇게 많은데도 점심시간이면 길게 줄을 서야 한다.
Just looking at the area around where our newspaper – the Dong-A Ilbo – is located, dozens of famous-name coffee shops have since popped up. Even though there are many of them, at lunch time, you still have to stand in a long line to get into any one of them.

반면 담배는 피울 곳도, 피우는 사람도 줄었다. 남북 사이 공통점을 느꼈던 ‘한 대 물고 한담’ 문화는 어느덧 ‘한 잔 들고 한담’ 문화로 바뀐 지 오래다.
People who smoke and places where one may smoke, on the other hand, have dwindled in number. Quite some time has passed since the culture of smoking and joking, which was once shared in common between the North and the South, suddenly changed into the culture of drinking coffee and joking.

최근 북한 이야기를 들어보면 빠르게 바뀌는 것은 한국뿐만이 아닌 것 같다. 평양에서도 이젠 커피가 더이상 귀한 음료 대접을 받지 못한다고 한다. 물론 아직 지방엔 커피 맛을 모르는 사람들이 훨씬 더 많지만 적어도 평양에선 커피 수요층이 급격히 늘고 있다.
Listening to talk from North Korea as of late, it seems that South Korea is not the only one that is quickly changing. Even in Pyeongyang, it is said that there is no more precious beverage to which one may be treated than coffee. Of course, in the provinces, there are still far more people who do not know the taste of coffee [than who do], but in Pyeongyang, there is a certain rapidly growing stratum of people – however [relatively] small – that demands coffee.

나는 북에 살 때 커피란 것을 딱 한 번, 그것도 한 모금도 안 되게 조금 마셔봤다. 커피란 말은 수없이 들어봐서 맛이 궁금했었는데, 맛을 보고 나서는 ‘뭘 이런 걸 돈 주고 사 먹지’ 하는 생각이 들었다. 커피에 중독성이 있다는 사실은 몰랐다.
When I lived in the North, I tasted a little bit of what they called coffee exactly one time, and not even a whole mouthful. I was curious about the taste – having heard talk of coffee countless times – but, when I tasted it, I only thought, “People actually pay money to drink this?!” I was unaware of the fact that coffee had addictive properties.

1990년대엔 외화상점에서만 캔커피를 살 수 있었다. 하지만 일본에서 커피를 마셔봤던, 돈 많은 북송 귀국자들이 사 먹는 맛이 이상한 음료 정도로만 여겼다. 커피 맛을 모르는 사람들에겐 비싼 커피를 살 돈이면 외제 담배 한 갑을 사는 게 훨씬 더 경제적이었다.
In the 1990s, one could buy only coffee-in-a-can, and only at special stores that sold foreign goods. However, it was regarded only as a strange-tasting drink that was only for wealthy people who had tried coffee in Japan while traveling abroad. To people who had never tasted coffee, if you even had enough money for it, it was far more economical to use the money to buy a pack of foreign cigarettes instead.

하지만 지금은 평양에선 중산층 집에 가도 커피를 마실 수 있다. 대학입학시험 준비를 하는 학생들이 각성제로 마시는 것이 커피다. 좀 괜찮은 직장에 근무하는 사람들은 야근을 서면서 인스턴트커피를 마신다.
But now, in Pyeongyang, one could find coffee even in a middle-class home. Coffee is consumed as a stimulant by students who are preparing for college-entrance exams. In workplaces that are somewhat better-off than others, instant coffee is consumed by employees who work the night shift.

내가 10여 년 전 남쪽에 와서 경험했던 ‘한 손에 커피, 한 손엔 담배’ 문화가 바야흐로 북한에서 막 시작되는 것이다.
The culture of ‘coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other’ – which I experienced when I came to South Korea ten years ago – has just started to take hold in North Korea.

평양에서 팔리는 커피는 당연히 중국산이 대부분이다. 하지만 진짜인지, 중국산 짝퉁인지는 알 수 없지만 한국산 ‘막대커피’도 시중에서 많이 팔린다.
Naturally, most of the coffee sold in Pyeongyang is produced in China. However, South Korean produced ‘stick coffee’ – the long, narrow, tubular instant coffee packets that are ubiquitous in South Korea – is also widely sold in the city, although one cannot know if they are the true article or if they are Chinese imitations.

커피에 대해선 북한 당국이 크게 통제하지 않는다. 하긴 통제해야 할 간부들이 제일 좋아하는 것이 한국산 커피라는 이유도 있을 것이다.
The North Korean government doesn’t regulate coffee very much. Indeed, it could be for the reason that the high-ranking people who would be enacting the regulations love South Korean produced coffee more than any other kind.

커피 문화가 발달하면서 평양에도 커피숍이 하나둘 생겨나기 시작해 이젠 ‘24시간 커피숍’도 등장했다. 가격도 크게 비싸지 않다. 커피 한 잔이 밥 한 끼 값과 맞먹는 남쪽과 체감 가격은 거의 비슷하다.
As ‘coffee culture’ develops, a few coffee shops have begun springing up even in Pyeongyang, and now, even a 24-hour coffee shop has appeared. The prices are not even extremely high. The price of a cup of coffee there is nearly comparable to the price of a cup of coffee in South Korea, where a cup of [high quality] coffee costs roughly the same as a meal in an [inexpensive] restaurant, and slowly but surely decreases.

북한에 커피숍이 늘어난다는 소식은 개인적으론 반가웠다. 이제 당장 통일이 돼도 평양에 가서 그곳 사람들과 커피 한 잔 앞에 놓고 이야기를 할 수 있는 공통의 문화적 코드가 생겨서이다.
To me, personally, the news of coffee shops increasing in number in North Korea is welcome. My reason is that if Korea were to reunify right now, then there would be a common cultural ‘code’ available that would enable a person to go to Pyeongyang, and chat with the people there over a cup of coffee.

사실 남북의 70년간의 분단은 문화에서도 큰 장벽을 만들었다. 남쪽에 처음 와서 이곳에서 배울 만큼 배운 사람들이 나폴레옹을 패퇴시킨 러시아 명장 쿠투조프 원수를 모른다는 사실이 놀라웠다.
Truly, seventy years of division between the North and South has created a great cultural barrier. When I first came to the South, I was surprised to find that there were only about as many people who had learned of Mikhail Kutuzov – the famous Russian field marshal who drove Napoleon Bonaparte out of Russia – as who hadn’t learned of him.

하지만 나 역시 19세기에 활약했던 미국의 명장 로버트 리 장군이나 율리시스 그랜트 장군의 이름을 들어본 적이 없었다.
However, I had naturally never heard the names of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, the famous American generals who rose to prominence in the nineteenth century.

그도 그럴 것이 북한 사람들은 어려서부터 러시아나 중국 영화만 보면서 자랐지만, 남쪽 사람들은 할리우드 문화권에서 살았기 때문이다.
Even such [peculiarities] are because North Koreans grow up watching only Chinese and Russian movies, and South Koreans live within Hollywood’s sphere of cultural influence.

그런 까닭에 언어만 통한다면 북한 사람들은 남쪽 사람들보다는 중국이나 러시아 사람과 더 문화적 동질성을 느끼리라 생각한다.
For reasons such as these, even if North Korea and South Korea have a language in common, North Koreans would feel rather more cultural affinity towards China and Russia than towards South Korea.

반대로 남쪽 사람들도 북한 사람보다는 미국 사람과 훨씬 더 이야깃거리가 많을 것이다. 이런 상황에서 커피라는 대화 매개체라도 생긴다면 반가운 일이 아닐 수 없다.
On the other hand, South Koreans would likewise have quite a lot more things to talk about with Americans than they would with North Koreans. In the midst of such circumstances, if such a human-interactional medium as coffee were to emerge, then it could only be a welcome thing.

하지만 평양의 커피 문화가 앞으로 확대될지는 장담하기 어렵다. 커피가 일상화되자 이젠 북한 부유층들 속에서 차별화를 위해 차 문화가 발달한다는 소식이 들린다.
However, it is hard to say with certainty whether or not coffee culture in Pyeongyang will continue to expand in the future. It is said that as coffee becomes more of an everyday thing, the upper-most classes in North Korea have been developing a tea culture amongst themselves in order to distinguish themselves [from the more bourgeois classes of people].

손님에게 차를 꺼내 놓고 이 차가 얼마나 괜찮은 차인지 유래 정도는 읊어줘야 교양 있는 부유층이라 인정받는 분위기라 한다. 중국과 흡사한 모습이다.
It is said that the atmosphere is such that if one produces tea for a guest, one must be able to – in testimony to how fine the tea is – recite the history and pedigree of the tea, in order to show that one is a morally and intellectually superior member of society’s elite. Such an atmosphere is not unlike that of China.

이 역시 생필품의 90% 이상을 중국에 의존하고 있고, 여전히 중국 문화권에 머무르고 있는 북한이기에 벌어지는 현상이라 할 수 있다.
One could say that such a state of affairs would predictably resolve itself, due to North Korea depending on China for over ninety percent of its essential goods, and lying – as it always has – within China’s sphere of cultural influence.

이런 세태를 반영하듯 최근 북한 장마당엔 수십 가지의 차가 팔리고 있고 평양 시내에 찻집도 생겨나고 있다. 중국의 유명 차는 물론이고 강령녹차 같은 북한산 차도 인기가 있다.
In a reflection of this lifestyle trend, dozens of kinds of tea are sold in North Korea, and, as of late, tea houses have also been popping up in the middle of Pyeongyang. Even North Korean teas – such as Gangnyeong Green Tea, from North Korea’s Hwanghae-Nam province – are popular, as are, without a doubt, famous Chinese teas.

장차 북한 음료계의 판세는 커피로 기울 것인가, 차로 기울 것인가. 남쪽을 빠르게 휘어잡은 커피의 중독성에 기대를 걸어본다.
In this foreseeable ‘battle of the beverages’ that is to unfold in North Korea, will the final decision lean toward coffee, or toward tea? I throw in my lot with coffee, and its addictiveness, which has taken little time in subduing the South.