Monday, July 18, 2011

North Korea's solution to famine : luxury restaurant

Here we are again, in the magical place we call North Korea, where logic and reason don't ever seem to apply. If you've been paying attention to the happenings around the world recently, you probably have read a few articles about the food shortage in North Korea. So what does the North Korean government do?

Build an uber-luxurious restaurant.
Source : ABC

ABC recently has been reporting some unique news reports on North Korea. The most recent one is this.
The capital of North Korea has been previously best known for its gastronomic delicacy of cold noodles in broth – slyly called Pyongyang deoldeori, which translates to "shivering in Pyongyang."
More after the jump.

Pyongyang-style Cold Noodles (평양냉면), they serve this.
This restaurant is located in the headquarters of a North Korea-Europe joint venture company for DVD player production. The restaurant claims that they welcome "foreigners and locals alike". Since only a very few selected privileged people can live in Pyongyang in the first place, this is the restaurant for the very rich. 

For your information, cold noodle (냉면) isn't a luxury food in South Korea. It's like, a very ubiquitous lunch food you can find cheap anywhere.

The WTF-train goes on : 
It's not clear why the restaurant contains a hairdresser, sauna, treadmills and a swimming pool. But the heavily produced promotional video, with animated champagne corks popping and smiling clown fish, lingers over these stations as well as the marble-lined private dining rooms decked with flat-screen LCD TVs and glass chandeliers.
Despite being a dining establishment, the Restaurant at Hana website, surprisingly doesn't mention food. And the video does not show any people in the restaurant, either customers or staff.
I'm gonna leave this up to you with two points. One, if you ever go to North Korea, try avoiding this place since it sounds friggin' haunted. Second, North Korea should really stop this BS and feed the starving... I don't know, people.

3 comments:

  1. It's hightime they also spoiled themselves, don't you think? What's funny is that I was backpacking there back in the days, and trust me they had no luxury places whatsoever.

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  2. Love the post and especially the photos!

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