the music entertainment

was astounding, in terms of experiencing the North Korean

culture and what it's like.

It was super cool.

- [Narrator] North Korea's government owns and operates

around 130 restaurants across Asia.

The restaurants are called Pyongyang,

named after the Capital of North Korea.

Serving North Korean food and liquor

and featuring live music, the chain offers

visitors a rare glimpse into the reclusive nation's culture.

- The food is excellent, actually.

- [Narrator] Tokyo based video-blogger, Hikosaemon

visited the Pyongyang restaurant in Dalian, China.

- It looked like fairly standard Korean food,

it was variants of kimchi, various sort of,

soups and meats and so on.

It wasn't that much to look at but it really

was very good.

It was really tasty.

The beer, as well.

I think it tasted a bit like Tsingtao.

It was one of those, sort of light, sweetish

beers that they make in China.

But I have to say, I wasn't expecting much of the food.

Again, you just have this idea

that it's a resource poor country that you don't

expect the food to be a little bit austere or something.

- [Narrator] The wait staff is made up

only young North Korean women.

They serve food, perform pop songs and traditional

Korean music and chat with the diners.

- The people who are serving your meal,

they sit down at your table and you get to chat

with them for a time and ask them about North Korea

and they ask about Japan and so on

and then they go up and they sing, they dance,

they play multiple instruments.

I've never experienced anything like that at all,

I suppose.

- [Narrator] The Pyongyang restaurant chain

generates about 10 million dollars for North Korea each year

but here's the catch:

the restaurants are a direct violation of UN sanctions.

- The United Nations Security Council has required

any country in the world that's a member of the

United Nations to enforce sanctions

on North Korea to limit its access to foreign currency

and to foreign products and these are very wide-ranging

sanctions and they include things

like allowing them to operate joint ventures or businesses

in your country.

So, the United Nations has passed this resolution.

It was agreed to by all the major countries,

including China and the United States

but it's up to each individual country

to enforce those sanctions and so countries

can choose to either look the other way

or lightly enforce it or not enforce it at all.

- [Narrator] Pyongyang employees are selected

by the government and kept under a watchful eye.

- The one thing that's interesting about these businesses

is what it requires North Korea to do

is send its own people out into the world.

In North Korea, you're not actually allowed to leave

the country. That's why people will call it a prison camp.

You have to get special permission and it's

really hard to get and almost no one gets to go abroad

and when they do go abroad, they're tightly isolated

and kept away.

- I just appreciated the fact that

it sort of humanized the image of the country

just a little bit while at the same time

still having all that thing,

that you know them and

the restaurant's there for hard currency for the regime

and the people there are not strictly free.

They are, they have minders.

They can go out in town with minders and so on

but basically, they live in a dorm

attached to the restaurant.

It didn't feel like I was at a prison camp

or being spied upon,

as much as you might expect that to be.

It actually surprised me at how normal it was

and it was a pleasant evening in spite of

perhaps knowing what else is going on.

- [Narrator] The restaurants made news in 2016

when a crew of 13 workers defected to South Korea.

South Korea's foreign ministry has advised people

to not dine in Pyongyang restaurants

because the profits benefit the Kim regime.

But with warming relations between North Korea

and the rest of the world,

these chains may become less taboo in the future.