BEIJING — A small ethnic restaurant in the heart of this sprawling capital city is raising some bigger questions about China’s commitment to carry out its promises to the U.S. and the international community.
In September 2017, Beijing’s leaders announced that within four months the roughly 100 North Korean-owned restaurants scattered throughout the country would be shuttered, a response to the international economic sanctions pushed by the Trump administration to pressure Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile arsenals.
The eateries, largely staffed by North Koreans who are carefully vetted for their loyalty and who often are confined to the site even when they are off the clock, have emerged as a critical cash cow for the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. They are particularly popular among South Korean tour groups and local Chinese looking for a nostalgic dining experience that harks back to China’s Maoist era.
The South Korean government estimates that the restaurants generate up to $100 million a year, a significant sum for a regime that has few export markets and faces U.N. trade embargoes on critical items such as oil, iron, foodstuffs, luxury goods and industrial equipment.
The 2017 announcement was seen as an encouraging sign that Beijing was finally cracking down on its only treaty ally and finally taking seriously global concerns about the security threat the North’s nuclear arsenal posed.
Yet more than a year after they were supposedly banned, at least two North Korean restaurants continue to operate in plain view in central Beijing, not far from the North Korean Embassy.
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They don’t attempt to disguise their presence at all. Both restaurants, one specializing in Korean barbecue and the other in seafood dishes, have the colors of the North Korean flag displayed openly on their facades.
Joshua Stanton, a Washington-based North Korea sanctions analyst, said it’s clear that the North Korean restaurants aren’t offering only a place to get a bite to eat.
“They’re perfect fronts for [money laundering],” Mr. Stanton said. “Money laundering works best when done in cash and off the wires, where banking regulators can’t see it until it’s commingled and deposited. That requires a source of ’clean’ money and an explanation of a legitimate income source to commingle with the proceeds of illicit activity.”
On a recent weekday, lunch business was slow at the seafood restaurant. The restaurant staff, entirely female and decked out in identical red and blue uniforms, was solicitous. When not busy attending to the few customers, they stood at the side of the restaurant and read small booklets of propaganda to themselves.
Mournful North Korean ballads blasted over the loudspeakers, and North Korean state television played silently on a large television screen. The scene at the barbecue restaurant was more raucous, with female staff members, one strumming an acoustic guitar, playing North Korean musical numbers from a small stage as diners watched.
How the restaurants remain staffed is also a mystery. U.N. sanctions prohibit Beijing from extending or issuing work visas to North Korean nationals.
• Ethan Epstein can be reached at eepstein@washingtontimes.com.
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