By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein
The largest of North Korea’s overseas restaurants has closed, and its workers have gone home, reports Daily NK. Those formerly employed in North Korea’s overseas joint ventures abroad, and as overseas labor with other companies, have been returning home in stages since sanctions passed by the UNSC last September forbade joint ventures with North Korea.
These restaurants are (were?) an interesting phenomenon. I’ve visited them in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China, and the last time I went to one was in 2013. At the time, it was packed with tourists, mostly from South Korea, and some locals. This was generally my experience with these restaurants from the first time I visited one in 2008, but of course I can’t say for sure whether that impression was representative of a general picture.
The last time I went to one was in 2016, in Beijing. On a regular Saturday night, the place was virtually empty, save for a couple of middle-aged men donning Kim Il-sung badges, drinking beer and chain smoking. Our party got our own room, complete with karaoke, even though we didn’t ask for one, simply because the place was so empty. I got a hint about what the reasons might have been earlier in the day when I called to make a reservation: since I spoke to the staff in Korean, they felt obligated to inform me that customers from South Korea were no longer welcome. This business-killing restriction was likely imposed after the mass defection to South Korea, from one of the restaurants earlier that year. For what it’s worth, this particular one – in central Beijing – seemed like a dying endeavor over a year before the sanctions, though one can’t generalize from just one data point.
Here’s Daily NK’s story:
Ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, Daily NK obtained photos of employees of a recently-closed North Korean restaurant called Pyongyang Koryo Pavilion in the Chinese border city of Dandong returning home to North Korea.
Pyongyang Koryo Pavilion was the largest of North Korea’s overseas restaurants, and originally employed 200 people. However, the restaurant shut down in November due to intensifying international sanctions targeting North Korea for its nuclear and missile development. Its employees have continued to return to North Korea in groups.
“Management started repatriating the workers in groups following the Pyongyang Koryo Pavilion’s closure, but some of them went to work at other restaurants,” a source in China close to North Korean affairs told Daily NK on February 14. “The 30 people returning ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday were part of the contingent that had been working at other establishments following the shutdown of Pyongyang Koryo Pavilion.”
In September 2017, China’s Commerce Ministry ordered the closure of North Korean companies operating inside the country within 120 days of UN Resolution 2375, which passed on September 11, 2017. The ministry also announced that Chinese joint ventures with North Koreans and North Korean companies would be closed.
Upon the realization that the Pyongyang Koryo Pavilion would likely not be resuming operations, the North Korean authorities began to exfiltrate the workers in stages.
“They’re heading back to their hometowns, where their families live, but they don’t look very happy about it because they’re losing the opportunity to earn money abroad.
Article source (with pictures):
More North Korean overseas workers return home
Seol Song Ah
Daily NK
2018-02-16
