Name: North Korea's International Restaurant Chain
Uploaded: 2020-07-13T04:19:00.000Z
Duration: 4 min 48 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

North Korea is known for a lot of things.

Adverbs of manner

Like banning "capitalist" blue jeans, having an entire fake town built just in the hopes that South Korea will get jealous and haircuts so fresh it's actually illegal not to have them.

Modal verbs - B1

One thing you might not know about is it's global restaurant chain.

So let's start from the basics, this is Japan, this is Korea, and this is a town in China called Longdong, and here are the other five places in China also called Longdong, alright we get it.

With that cleared up, I should tell you that in 1910 Japan annexed Korea.

Then after the Second World War--which I heard didn't go too well for Japan--the U.S. and USSR divided up Korea ... wait this story sounds familiar.

As commonly occurred in these times, the two nations played a little bit of communist capitalist hockey cokey, they went in, out, in, out, shake it all about.

And eventually a fragile truce was achieved along the 38th parallel.

And there the border has stayed until the current day.

South Korea to the south and, you're never going to guess this, North Korea to the north.

Technically, the two countries are still at war so when I say fragile I mean fragile like my ego.

South Korea has become a technological hub, holding the title for the fastest Internet speeds and best 4G coverage.

While North Korea turned out pretty different--it does have the world's largest stadium but also the title of most corrupt and least democratic state, so you know, swings and roundabouts.

In an attempt to keep the North Korean people loyal to their all loving, actually flying, never pooping supreme leader, there's a strict ban on almost anything with Western influence in the country.

No golden arches--the people are told that Kim Jong-Il actually invented the burger--no Hollywood, there are some awesome North Korean rip offs of Western films, and no Gregorian calendar.

Fun fact: In North Korea the year is actually only 108.

Now they don't like culture coming in and they generally frown upon any of the citizens leaving the country.

The first is diplomatic envoys like ambassadors, business people and of course Kim Jung-Un himself, who was apparently a child prodigy able to drive a car at the age of three.

The next exception would be for athletes.

Now of all sports, which do you think North Korea has an Olympic medal in?

What if I told you one of them was volleyball.

Another group of people allowed to leave the country are workers specially picked by the government.

Many of these people work on general labour sites, like building the stadiums for the Qatar World Cup, as if it didn't already have enough controversy.

But the ones we want to focus on are the ones that work in the government owned restaurant chain that has spread to a dozen countries with at least 130 locations in total.

The franchise is fairly uncreatively named Pyongyang after the country's capital.

As you can see most of these locations are fairly local to their mothership.

But for a brief period in 2012 there was also one in all the way in Amsterdam.

There were also rumours that there was plans to open a location in Scotland, apparently because Kim took a shining to the country after it campaigned for independence and because he has a love of whisky.

And, to be fair, he wouldn't be the first controversial world leader to harbour an obsession with the country.

So, for the time being it looks like you'll have to travel all the way to Asia to experience these institutions.

They're reportedly most commonly visited by South Korean tourists curious to see what their Northern counterparts eat.

However, back in 2016 the South Korean government politely asked it's citizens to stop visiting the restaurant because they were basically funneling 10 million dollars back to a regime that has ambitions to wipe out their entire country.

Based on a U.S. average, that 10 million is worth around 5 and a half nuclear bombs.

Like I was saying, the people that work in these restaurants are often hand selected by the government, even often being direct relatives of people high in the North Korean establishment.

You'll find yourself served by attractive young Korean women who perform dances and do karaoke, which honestly sounds, just awful.

And although McDonald's doesn't exist in their homeland something tells me they've been influenced just a little.

Despite the hand selection, hours of screening for political loyalty and the fact the workers live at the restaurants reportedly watched by security guards, there have been several cases where workers have defected.

Some of the locations have been forced to temporarily close because of these defections, including one in 2016 where thirteen of it's staff successfully made it to South Korea to claim asylum.

So, if you just so happen to be in the area and have a somewhat questionable moral compass, what can you expect to be served at one of these restaurants?

The menu boasts mostly traditional North Korean cuisine including cold noodles, kimchi and cuttlefish.

But there are some slightly more obscure items on offer, from ginseng wine to dog-meat soup.

Or if you're feeling particularly adventurous you could try the nameless product that is said to increase sexual virility made from an unidentified part of a bear.

Thanks for watching my video, be sure to subscribe and like the video if you did like it, and if you've got any interesting topics that you think I would be interested in, leave them in the comments and I'll have a look into them.