An informative article on North Korea

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Beyond Korean Barbecue
By John Feffer, AlterNet. Posted June 10, 2005.

North Korea has 1) boasted of having nuclear weapons; 2) threatened to turn
its neighbors into a "sea of fire"; 3) traded in illegal drugs and
counterfeit currency; or 4) been enjoying a gourmet revival.

If you snorted at the last choice, think again.

Recent visitors to the "hermit kingdom" report that good food is no longer
limited to government functions or the occasional hotel eatery. A new raft
of restaurants -- from Korean barbecue to fast-food hamburgers -- cater to
foreigners and locals alike.

"Everybody is now interested in making money, and restaurants are one way
of doing so," says Kathi Zellweger of the Catholic aid organization,
Caritas. "On my last trip I was told that in Pyongyang alone there are now
over 350 new restaurants and I did note far more restaurant signs on
buildings and also some 'beer drinking bars' packed with men in evenings."

While North Korea's thriving restaurant scene might seem like minor news --
a feature perhaps for the Wall Street Journal's offbeat middle column --
this new trend is in fact a key economic and social indicator of change.
The U.S. media provides a steady diet of unappetizing images -- the shadowy
nuclear complex, the military parades, the dour aging leadership. This is
what "evil" is supposed to look like. But as the burgeoning restaurant
trade suggests, the North Korean reality has departed significantly from
the fixed menu we've come to expect.

From Famine to Feast?

In the late 1990s when I visited North Korea on an agricultural delegation,
the country was still in the throes of a famine. Starving people were not
visible on the street but aid workers were still encountering severely
malnourished children in daycare centers and hospitals. The North Korean
government was appealing to the world for more food aid. Yet our North
Korean hosts insisted on bringing the delegation to extravagant meals at
hotel restaurants. Knowing full well the economic hardships the population
was enduring, we tried to beg off from these meals of grilled meat and
spicy stews. Something simple would be fine, we said. But our hosts were
eager to show us the best food on offer in Pyongyang and, no doubt, to get
a proper meal for themselves in the bargain.

We ate alongside foreign businessmen, an occasional tourist group from
China, and some of the 100 or so foreign workers in the country. Our hosts
ordered North Korean specialties such as mung bean pancakes, a delicious
stew made from "sweet meat" (a euphemism for dog), and, of course, cold
noodles. Pyongyang is known throughout the region for its cold noodles,
served in a broth with a slice of meat and hard-boiled egg. South Koreans
who visit Pyongyang, our hosts told us, would eat several bowls of cold
noodles at one sitting so overjoyed were they to taste the real thing.

Much has happened since the late 1990s. The famine has abated, though
malnutrition remains endemic and the UN World Food Program forecasts
serious shortages if foreign contributions do not resume flowing. The
fitful detente between the United States and North Korea has broken down,
the North has resumed its nuclear weapons program and declared itself a
nuclear power, and the six-power negotiations to resolve the crisis have
ground to a halt.

During this deepening imbroglio, North Korea embarked with much fanfare on
an economic "adjustment," a term it prefers to the more radical-sounding
"reform." Cold-war conservatives remain skeptical of Pyongyang's attempts
to pull off a Deng Xiaopeng-style reform.

"North Korea's autarkic economy today seems utterly incapable of using
peaceful international commerce to generate the revenues necessary to
sustain the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," writes Nicholas
Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. Eberstadt has long been
predicting the end of North Korea; in his opinion, the economic reforms are
just perfume to conceal the rot.

Other observers consider the economic transformation to be more
substantial. Robert Carlin, a former analyst for the CIA and the State
Department, believes that Kim Jong Il brought a high-level delegation to
glittering Shanghai in January 2001 to convince the elite of the necessity
of economic reform. By November 2001, Carlin says, "you got this very
important instruction from Kim Jong Il that the basis of the economy was
transformed. Profit was now the basis for measuring success in the economy."

After the economic "adjustment" was officially launched in July 2002, an
internal battle between military hardliners and economic reformers
continued to simmer within the ruling elite. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in
March 2003, which encouraged speculation that next up would be either Iran
or North Korea, seemed to strengthen the hands of the military. But as the
U.S. army became bogged down in the Middle East and less capable of taking
on another military challenge, the economic reformers in Pyongyang fought
back. Carlin hypothesizes that by June 2003, the reformers had at least
temporarily gained the upper hand.

By the summer of 2003, it was also clear that an "adjustment" had taken
place in Pyongyang's restaurant world. In July 2003, UN workers Sofia
Malmqvist, Olof Nunez and Roberto Christen put out a guide to Pyongyang
restaurants. Printed privately and distributed to friends and colleagues,
the guide rates 50 restaurants in Pyongyang according to price and quality.

It is the first such attempt to introduce foreigners to the secrets of
eating out in a city where visitors rarely wander around unescorted. The
guide provides much useful advice. Foreigners are not common, for instance,
at the city's one bowling alley, but you might be able to hang out with the
locals if you praise the restaurant's stews. American-style pancakes are
available at the Pyongyang Information Center's second-floor restaurant.
The Chongchun 1 restaurant attracts families and children and, according to
the guide, is "a definite 'dine with the proletariat' experience!"
Co-author Roberto Christen relates that he often mixed with North Koreans
at these restaurants, communicating across language barriers about such
matters as food and weather.

full: http://www.alternet.org/story/22151/

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