Absolute control: North Korea recalls border waitresses

FPI / December 1, 2024

Geostrategy-Direct

The city of Dandong in China, which sits across the Yalu River from North Korea, features several restaurants staffed by North Korean waitresses who not only serve tables but sing and dance to entertain the diners.

Though the waitresses are the main reason diners visit the restaurants, most of the money they earn is sent to the North Korean government in the form of “loyalty funds.”

They live in very poor conditions, sometimes even sleeping in small rooms inside the restaurants and are rarely allowed out.

“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,” Radio Free Asia (RFA) Korean noted in a Nov. 19 report.

So, when one of the waitresses went missing, the Kim Jong-Un regime recalled all of the waitresses.

Dozens of the women were shipped back to North Korea to face punishment after one of them temporarily escaped from her job, residents in China told Radio Free Asia.

The waitress at the Ryugyong restaurant who went missing, returned a week later. That prompted the Pyongyang regime to crack down on the entire staff of waitresses.

“I went to the Ryugyong restaurant today during the day and found that there were no North Korean waitresses working in the restaurant,” a patron told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity over security reasons. “There were only Chinese employees.”

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