- <i>"We heard that the girls stay in the Hotel (yes, upstairs) and they are seldom allowed out and that they do not get paid or if they do, the amount is for pocket money as everything from food and lodging to basic necessities are provided by the State."</i><p>In more straightforward language: these are slaves.<p>[late edit]: Here's more about how these slave women are treated:<p>- <i>"In contrast, he said the high achievers are rewarded with a trip to a North Korean restaurant, where they can pick one of the waitresses to spend the evening with. The top employee of the month gets to choose first. He likened it to a hostess bar - and accused managers of "preying on young men's sexual urges, to get them to compete and bring in more money"."</i><p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68226271" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68226271</a> (<i>"North Koreans working in China 'exploited like slaves"</i> (2024))
If you want North Korean food, but not run by the North Korean government with the weird slavery shit, there's numerous Korean restaurants north of North Korea in Yanbian, Jilin/Changchun, etc. Just regular restaurants, mostly run by Chinese that are ethnically Korean.
I have to admit, I’d be curious to visit one of these restaurants myself. However, one has to be aware of the fact that these restaurants are reportedly linked to the secretive North Korean party organization, Room 39 [1], which means that all revenue flows directly into the hands of the Kim dynasty, so in the best case you'll help financing their next BMW or much worse, the nuclear arms program—neither of these I'm very comfortable with…<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_39" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_39</a>
Until 2020 the you could book a stay in a backpacker hostel in Berlin that was actually located inside the North Korean embassy.<p>Eventually the German government got fed up with them running a business out of their embassy and they had to shut it down.
The food called "black rice" in the blog is called sundae or soondae (순대) which in South Korea they put glass noodles and such instead of rice. So it is not North Korean specialty. If you the author haven't tried, you should definitely try from South Korean restaurants too and there are a different versions of food with sundae; steamed, in soup, stirfried in spicy sauce... etc.
My experience echos this but on a smaller scale, I’ve visited the NK run restaurant in Bangkok in 2019 and found it to be basically any average nondescript very dated East Asian / Korean restaurant, but odd. It was smaller, maybe seating 60-75 tops?<p>The food was fine, and they played NK music (the kind you’d hear on Korean Central Television) while we ate. The unique thing I recall on the menu was the Pyongyang Cold Noodles which I did not get.<p>Unfortunately the waitresses did not do karaoke which I heard was the entertainment and the whole experience was notable but not like “holy crap”.<p>When asked about takeaways they did offer to sell me NK cigarettes and Soju.
I visited a similar NK restaurant in Saigon a few times before they closed down decade ago and the experience was the same. What impressed me is that all the NK waitresses can speak the local language (Vietnamese) fluently and can sing or play music instruments. The food is quite authentic, some ingredients are exported from NK. It was a good experience overall.
There's a few NK restaurants in Beijing as well. Very mid food in the 90s. Went back in 2010s and they had a bunch of much tastier new items, can't tell if still traditional or making up new tradition to keep up with the times. Anecdotally from aquaintences, there's American style fast food in Pyongyang, and their fried chicken is very good. Have to keep up with the Korean peninsula fried chicken race.
I went to the branch in Phnom Penh years ago. Basically the same format as described in the article, including the karaoke like rock performance. I recall there was dog on the menu. Otherwise it's your typical dystopian experience.
There was one in Yangon, Myanmar too. Shut down in 2018. <a href="https://g.co/kgs/fvWRe18" rel="nofollow">https://g.co/kgs/fvWRe18</a>
When I was living in Beijing in 2018-2020, there was a Korean restaurant I liked. It had the usual South Koren dishes (I'm a topokki fan myself), but I remember they did serve bottled North Korean beer. That was pretty cool, I have a photo of it somewhere.