One day in February 2012 the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un visited the Samilpho Specialities Factory.
After looking round various production lines for a long time, he dropped in the production site of the makkoli workteam.
Having put all its production lines ranging from milling, bacteria cultivation and fermentation to sterilization, injection and packaging on a flow-line basis, the workteam produced thousands of bottles of makkoli a day.
Told by an official that makkoli produced at the factory is highly popular among Pyongyang citizens, Kim Jong Un took a bottle from a display shelf and opened it.
As an official told him not to drink it because the weather was cold, he said he was alright and he would taste it as one of the people. Then he urged the officials accompanying him to have a taste of it so as to see if corn makkoli was really popular among the citizens of Pyongyang.
When they tasted it, he asked one of them how he liked it and said that from olden times the Korean peasants would gather under the shade of a big zelkova tree during breaks at work on hot summer days and sing songs of bumper crops over jars of cold makkoli women brought to them after keeping them in spring water. He then said that he thought everyone would like it as it tasted sour and yet refreshing and that the quality of the drink should be further improved so that it could become a favourite drink of the people.
