SEOUL, Aug 23: North Korea, facing its worst food shortage in nearly a decade, has come up with a culinary innovation aimed at delaying the feeling of hunger noodles made from soybean, a report said on Saturday.

A research institute at the country’s education ministry has succeeded in making the food by mixing soybean with corn, Chosun Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper based in Japan, said.

Soybean has never been consumed as a staple food in North Korea and it has been used only for side dishes such as fermented bean curd and bean sprouts, it said.

“When you consume ordinary noodles (made from wheat or corn), you may soon feel your stomach empty. But this soybean noodle delays such a feeling of hunger,” the paper said on its website.

The new noodle has almost twice the protein and five times more fat than the normal noodles consumed by North Koreans, it said.

It represents a technological breakthrough as soybean has previoulsy proved difficult to turn into noodles it lacks starch, Chosun Sinbo said.

Workers from food processing plants, companies and government agencies as well as housewives have been visiting the research institute to learn about the noodle, it added.

A recent survey found up to half the people in North Korea were having to forage for foods and some were resorting to eating edible grasses and roots.—AFP