Fish have long been of importance to North Korea, vital to its developmental ambitions, and through structures of division such as the Northern Limit Line, also to its politics. Fish and seafood in general have been key elements in the cuisine and dietary practices of the Korean peninsula since the beginning of its recorded history. Korean food frequently has fish, molluscs and cephalopods at its heart, from more common forms such as jjigae stews 찌개, to the challenging san-nakji 산낙지 (live octopus). Fish is eaten everywhere on the Korean peninsula, though of course it is less frequently eaten in the interior and in mountainous areas. Fish and seafood products are also eaten across all social classes on the Korean peninsula and in Korean history. In particular miyeok 미역 or wind/beach dried kelp has long been a vital element in Korean cooking, and the drying of miyoek by coastal communities was a key element to many of those communities social and economic practices in previous sentences. Of course there were varieties of seafood and maritime products that only the rich and elite could afford, and places where such food could be bought and consumed naturally became rarefied and expensive places, and seafood became an important element in the rediscovered “Korean Royal Court Cuisine” 조선왕조 궁중요리 Joseon wangjo gungjung yori, which harked back to the food practices of the Joseon dynasty. North Korea itself claims or aspires to be a classless society and a political space where there are no elites, and where the memory of the Joseon dynasty is dismissed as a feudal aberration. This paper explores an element of the reality of North Korea dining and food consumption and practices, particularly around seafood. Considering the vital importance of fishing and seafood to North Korea, particularly as a source of revenue and goods for export, and the role of fish and maritime products as a vital source of protein in Pyongyang’s conceptions of socialist developmental practice, the paper in particular considers the environmental and ecological histories of the seas around the north of the Korean peninsula in mind, as well as North Korea’s history of aquaculture, and efforts to farm particular species like Sturgeon and Atlantic Cod. Having done this the paper seeks to understand what the presence of elite fish restaurants and dining places in Pyongyang, and the research and logistics required to support them mean within the nation’s environmental and developmental history.