Read a version of this story in Korean
Dozens of staff at a popular North Korean restaurant in the Chinese city of Dandong are returning to North Korea to face punishment after one of them temporarily escaped from her job, residents in China told Radio Free Asia.
There are several North Korean restaurants in Dandong, which lies just across the Yalu River border from Sinuiju, and the young waitresses that Pyongyang sends over to staff them are the main draw. Not only do they serve tables, they also sing and dance to keep the diners entertained.
However, most of the money they earn is sent to the North Korean government in the form of “loyalty funds” and these women are known to live in very poor conditions, sometimes even sleeping in small rooms inside the restaurants.
Though they are in a foreign country, Pyongyang likes to keep absolute control over their access to the outside world, and monitors their every move, sometimes even forbidding them to leave the restaurant.
Earlier this year, one of the women at the Ryugyong restaurant went missing for a while, but then she returned.
In response, Pyongyang recalled all the waitresses working there, a Dandong resident told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“I went to the Ryugyong restaurant today during the day and found that there were no North Korean waitresses working in the restaurant,” he said. “There were only Chinese employees.”
He said the Ryugyong is popular because it is very large compared to the other North Korean restaurants in the city and it is ornately decorated.
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“But the most impressive thing that drew people in were the pretty North Korean women wearing colorful hanbok coming out to greet customers at the front door," he said, referring to traditional Korean clothing. In North Korea, it’s called chosonbok.
The resident explained the incident with the missing waitress. She secretly escaped the restaurant and it “caused an uproar” in the city, but she returned a week after the police tracked her down.
‘Imprisoning these women’
This all occurred earlier in the year, but there was a directive to keep it as an internal matter, but it was recently revealed publicly, he said.
“The employee’s escape is against the rules, but everyone is shocked by the inhumane treatment at the hands of the authorities,” he said. “They are essentially imprisoning these women in their 20s for many years to make them earn foreign currency for the country.”
He said that the order to recall all the restaurant employees came at the end of last month, and that the matter is considered a serious crime that “significantly damaged the image of the country.”
Another resident of Dandong told RFA that it’s likely people other than just the waitress who briefly escaped will be punished.
“The manager and the restaurant waitresses will also face severe judicial punishment,” he said on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “The representative dispatched as the owner of the restaurant and the safety representative in charge of personnel management, and the escaped employee are in big trouble.”
This is a significant departure from the past, when only the person causing the issue was punished.
“North Korean restaurant employees live in groups day and night under strict control,” the second resident said.
“All they can do is to take advantage of the rest day given once a month, but only sometimes, and go to the nearby market accompanied by the restaurant manager to buy necessary supplies,” he said.
“It’s the only time these trapped employees get a chance to look up at the sky and get some fresh air.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.