North Korea touts dog soup, ginseng to beat the heat

NORTH KOREA — Dog meat soup and bubbling ginseng broths are being proffered by North Korea’s leadership as home remedies to take the edge off a spell of searing weather.

The Korean peninsula is sweltering through a record-hot summer with 23 deaths attributed to the heat in the South, where new all-time highs were set on three days last week, peaking at 42.5 degrees Celsius on Sunday.

State media reported temperatures soaring up to 40C in the North, where the usual fiery threats of military action have been interspersed with humble cooking tips to combat the heat.

Article continues after this advertisement

A doctor cited by the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper suggested during Sunday’s record heat that dog soup would be “beneficial for nutritional supplementation.”

And on Wednesday, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) proposed a menu of “samgye-tang”: a broth soaking chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, dates and stamina-boosting ginseng.

“A Korean proverb says ‘like cures like,’” it said, describing the dish as a specialty of its southernmost border city of Kaesong.

KCNA also boasted of the “incomparable medicinal effect” of the Kaesong ginseng used in the dish, attributing it to the region’s “peculiar soil and water quality and unique cultivation method.”

Article continues after this advertisement

“The Korean people have regarded it as a custom good for health to make hot foods in the hottest period of summer,” it said.

Such scorching suggestions contrast with traditional medicine cultures elsewhere in Asia, where winter melon soup is among the preferred summer remedies.

Article continues after this advertisement

Climate of isolation

Dog meat was once also a summertime delicacy in the South, but is set to be outlawed by February 2027.

As the South reached record highs on Sunday, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist toured the demilitarized zone that has split the two Koreas since their 1950-1953 war ended with an armistice.

Across the truce line, North Korea’s self-declared soup hot spot Kaesong simmered in the distance through a heat haze.

A gargantuan North Korean propaganda flag flying on a 160-meter (525-foot) pole—the world’s tallest—hung limp in the humidity.

Seoul at the time was issuing emergency alerts warning its residents to pause all outdoor activities.

But on Kaesong’s outskirts—seen through binoculars used by visitors at a viewing platform—human specks pedaled bicycles and labored in fields.

Experts say isolated North Korea is ill-equipped for heatwaves—part of weather patterns that scientists say are becoming more extreme owing to man-made climate change.

As the heatwave hit, North Korea broadcast footage of citizens crowding beaches in Wonsan at a resort triumphantly opened by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un last summer.

They bobbed in kayaks and multicolored inflatables or tore along the coastline of Kalma Beach on jet skis, kicking up cooling sea sprays.

But away from that rare leisure outlet—and the curated gaze of state media—there is likely far less heat relief in a nation stricken by poverty.

Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Korea program, said state media emphasis on ensuring water and electricity supplies “suggests that both are under strain.”

“North Koreans are likely suffering more from the heat than South Koreans because they lack the infrastructure that South Korea has,” she said. /cb