Prime in Korea

I've just used a voucher which came with CAMRA's quarterly magazine Beer to order a box of eight South Korean beers in cans and bottles (free apart from just under a fiver for p&p).

The beer market in South Korea is dominated by light, rice-based lagers, a result no doubt of the US military presence there since World War II, and even the ones now being produced by microbreweries there - hazy IPAs, hoppy brown ales and funky saisons - have been inspired by the American craft beer revolution.

The company running the promotion have just come back from the Korean peninsula, visiting breweries both north and south of the demarcation line dividing it since the end of the war there in 1953.

In North Korea, as well as the large, state-run Taedonggang brewery - bizarrely brewing since 2000 on the imported kit of defunct English brewery Ushers of Trowbridge in Wiltshire - the lack of petrol for national distribution means that there are apparently now lots of brewpubs, in the hotels and restaurants serving foreign visitors and the roadside stands where locals drink their monthly Government ration of five free litres, and anything above that at about 30p a pint.

PS. Hats off to anyone who can identify the musical pun in the title without clicking here.