The impoverished state this week launched an advert on state TV for Taedonggang beer, a tipple it has been quietly brewing since shifting an entire brewery it bought in Britain to North Korea.
State TV shows almost no adverts - although programming about local factories is common - so the beer advert is a rare step towards commercialism.
Set to chirpy music and low-quality graphics, the ad opens with a glass filling with draught beer and the slogan: "Pride of Pyongyang."
In the ad aired yesterday, the beer is consumed by a miner dripping with sweat and served to well-attired urban dwellers by attractive young women dressed in traditional Korean clothes.
"It represents the new look of Pyongyang," said the ad, monitored today in Seoul.
"It will be a familiar part of our lives."
The brew has been sometimes available in South Korea.
It sells at hotels for foreigners in the North Korean capital
