North Korea’s International Cash-grab

You are craving some Korean food. Luckily for you, you have just heard about this amazing North Korean chain-restaurant called Pyongyang Restaurant—the food is supposedly delicious, you get a taste of a new and interesting North Korean atmosphere, and the beautiful waitresses even sing and dance when they’re not serving you. Well, this would be incredible if not for the fact that the North Korean atmosphere is repressive and full of censorship, that the waitresses are essentially prisoners here, and that this chain restaurant is run by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world that keeps the majority of their population in poverty, restricts almost all outside media and information, loves its labour camps, and much more. 

Pyongyang Restaurant is a chain run by an organisation known as the Haedanghwa Group (a branch of the North Korean government), and currently there are around 130 opened locations. The majority of these locations are in Southeast Asia, especially in China.

When entering one of these restaurants, the customer is bombarded with vibrant colours, music, and North Korean flags and decorations. Exactly what one might expect. Most of their menu is food you’d find in any other Korean restaurant (albeit much more pricey), but there are some North Korea-specific dishes, like Pyongyang cold noodles and Taedonggang beer. But this isn’t where the abnormality of Pyongyang Restaurant lies.

A waitress greets customers at the door and leads them to their tables, insisting that they not take any pictures while dining (a warning most customers ignore). However, after she is finished taking orders and serving food, she and the other waitstaff—all of whom are female, conventionally attractive, polite, artistically gifted, and have a family history of being loyal to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (or DPRK)—get up on stage and perform. They sing, dance, play instruments, and often wear traditional Chosŏn-ot dresses. Unsurprisingly, the songs that they sing are all about the supposed prosperity and glory of North Korea and the prestige of the Kim family. 

But don’t let the constant polite smile on the waitstaffs’ faces mislead you. These waitresses are forced to live right next to or right above the restaurant they work at, and are not allowed to roam the city without a chaperone. If the establishment ever closes, they must return to their homeland. One of the most high-profile defections from North Korea was in 2016 by 13 staff of Pyongyang Restaurant, who escaped from a location in China to Seoul, South Korea. 

There are two simple reasons why I believe that the North Korean government opened Pyongyang Restaurant—cash and cultural diplomacy.

Starting with the first; North Korea is extremely in need of money, especially foreign currency given that the North Korean Won is highly unstable, poorly managed, and cannot compete with the  Chinese yuan or American dollar. Thanks to sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the country rarely trades with other countries; Pyongyang Restaurant was a clever way to get around these restrictions. Every month, from their earnings, these restaurants must send North Korea a fixed amount of money—around 30,000$ USD—and failure to do so results in a shut down of the establishment. 

Secondly, the DPRK is big on propaganda—both for its people and for outsiders. Running an international restaurant with a vibrant atmosphere and beautiful ladies who sing and dance tells the rest of the world that North Korea is prosperous, lively, and not an impoverished country where over 40 per cent of the population is living in poverty. 

Pyongyang Restaurant really is a priceless (and depressing) metaphor for the very country that owns it; it tries to convince you that life in North Korea is normal, when on the inside, the average citizen might suggest otherwise.

So, knowing all this, would you dine at Pyongyang Restaurant?