A North Korean state news outlet claims Kim Jong Un’s father invented the burrito — and a propaganda video shows citizens chowing down on the Tex-Mex favorite despite widespread food shortages in the country.
Kim Jong Il came up with the idea for “wheat wraps” in 2011 shortly before he suffered a fatal heart attack, the Sun reported, citing a report in the Rodong Sinmun.
The Pyongyang mouthpiece also claimed the current despot has taken a “meticulous interest” in the dish and that it is “booming” among the population.
Propaganda footage on Pen News shows a vendor selling the food outside the Kumsong Food Factory — with scenes of trays overflowing with fillings containing what appear to be cabbage and carrots, Yahoo News reported.
The clip also features a mural of Kim’s late dad grinning in a kitchen where the burritos were being prepared.
The copious amount of food was in stark contrast with reported shortages in the secretive, isolated country.
“The majority of citizens do not have money to buy foreign food,” said
Hyun-seung Lee, who was born into an elite North Korean family but fled in 2014, the Sun reported.
He said there simply aren’t enough ingredients to recreate foreign delicacies.
“I have never seen any burritos or wraps on sale in North Korea,” he added. “The penetration rate of Western food in North Korea is extremely low, because there are very few restaurants where you can eat it and the food ingredients are not diverse.”
He added: “Various cooking ingredients such as milk, cheese, and spices are absolutely lacking.”
The Rodong Sinmun noted that Kim Jong Il recommended that people drink mineral water in the summer and hot tea in the winter while eating the “wheat wraps.”
The precise origin of the burrito is unclear, but the word appears in an 1895 Mexican dictionary, which describes it as a regional item from the Mexican state of Guanajuato.
