Pyongyang

South of Pyongyang – Journey into the culinary Heart of Darkness

Remember that opening teaser in a recent Bond movie, when James is caught and tortured by a fiendish looking North Korean killer spy chick, his licence to kill fucked, his macho spirit broken, no longer thinking of England? The North Koreans really did 007 in, he even grew a long perm and a beard from all the terror he received at the claws of this memorable commie femme fatale. I don’t remember whether he killed her before escaping back into the free world. I guess he must have. It doesn’t matter. It’s war.

Well, Cambodia knows all about war and is occasionally a part of the free world too. And though it is hard to imagine a mission important enough for Bond to travel to this shambolic, violent and ramshackle nation to save the world, the North Korean supervixens are already here. Just in case. In fact they are everywhere and I discovered a North Korean sleeper cell in my airing cupboard earlier this minute.
According to American presidents, the ‘Axis of Evil’ is spreading its evil wings across the globe, slowly suffocating us with, well, evil, and what better way to start than in Cambodia – where there is plenty of evil already and where people have been suffocating from lunatic regimes and vicious powerbrokers for decades.
North Korea has opened a restaurant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. It is aptly called ‘Pyongyang’ and it delivers not just North Korean cuisine to the curious and weird, but the best of North Korean entertainment. If you have never given a thought to the global war on terror, think again. And then go to the ‘Pyongyang’ and be entertained by the country’s finest.

Admittedly, North Korea is not really known for its cultural output - no pop singers, writers, painters or even humble North Korean sports personalities immediately spring to mind. North Korean cook-books are rare too.
That’s cause they are starving, or have been recently. Or will be in the future. That’s the price you pay for not letting the US buy you up in the 21st century. You are fucked. But I don’t want to blame it all on the evil Empire of the West – North Korea has enough alleged idiosyncrasies in its fruitbasket to fill the world with madness.
Other similarities. The North Koreans call their boss a president too. But his power extends much further than say, George W. Bush’s. While we are blessed with US presidential insanity for a maximum of eight years before the next crook slides into the driving seat, North Korean President Kim Il-Sung is pres for eternity. Just as well, as he’s been dead for 11 years. His son goes by the cunningly similar name Kim Jong-Il.
Both father and son are good mates with His Majesty retired King Sihanouk of Cambodia. King Sihanouk lived and studied film in Pyongyang. Unbelievable? Have a look at the films the former Cambodian monarch directed in the 1960s – if you can find one.
We are scratching the bottom of the pop cultural Asian barrel here, but this is the connection. North Korea and Cambodia have other things in common. While the Khmer Rouge starved hundreds of thousand of Khmers in the late 70s, the economy of North Korea crumbled with the fall of the Soviets and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans starved to death in the 1990s. And they are both so secretive that there is room for conspiracy - the US made it all up. Whatever the truth, it’s further proof of the world’s insanity.

So, North Koreans were starving, apparently (This is still a restaurant review, folks). Estimates from fairly reputable sources say that between one and three million people starved to death in the 1990s. What better way to promote a country than to open government licensed restaurants around the world. It is the closest thing to going corporate in a Stalinist universe.

Enough introduction. The ‘Pyongyang’, an officially authorized North Korean restaurant, opened in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh last year. It’s as wacky and not nearly as terrible as the country it showcases. And the food’s not bad.

Choe Hyang Mi is the Bond girl. She can do anything and this is why she works at the ‘Pyongyang’. Ostensibly, Choe is a waitress. She is 21, on a three year mission in the Cambodian capital and loving it, “I miss my fatherland the most, I miss Korea very much. After that, I miss my family.”
Choe’s skin is white as porcelain and her austere makeup makes her look fragile, almost transparent. A North Korean waif, a DMZ fairy.
The restaurant is staffed exclusively by women. The manager, who is not around, is a woman too. A rare victory for communism.
Chloe was trained in Bejing. Waitress schools in Bejing must have the same clout as film schools in Pyongyang. In Bejing, Chloe, together with the other members of staff, was trained in ‘foreign service skills’. In the course of the evening I witness an astounding plethora of these skills, all displayed with a die-hard professionalism that would be impossible to match in the corrupt, greed-ridden, degenerate and debauched western world. I mention to Chloe that working seven days a week (one day a month off) must be financially rewarding and a great privilege.
“We work only for the fatherland, not profit.”
I can feel the perm growing on the back of my head. It’s a novel experience, terrible, dark, unfathomnable. I find myself strangely drawn to this, woman.

Hong Young Mi is 21 as well. I would love to say she is an Axis of Evil clone of Chloe, but she is not. Hong is a little podgy, with rosy cheeks and a winning smile. She looks like she has just stepped out of a socialist propaganda poster. She has only been in Phnom Penh for a year. Next to knowing Chloe, rosy Hong looks fresh and innocent. I ask her whether she likes Cambodia.
“No,” the young woman replies with great certainty, “ I like Korea.”
For the girls at the ‘Pyongyang’, there is only Korea. No North and certainly, no South.
“Cambodia is very hot and dirty. Pyongyang is cold and clean.”
The restaurant too is cold and clean. It has as much ambience as an underused operating theatre in a public Asian hospital. The lights are bright, the a/c units are on overdrive and no cost and effort is spared to make the customers enjoy North Korea.

Over pancakes and sweet and sour fish, we listen to the first squeaks of the karaoke machine. Chloe has climbed the small stage in the corner of the restaurant and is kneeling down, fumbling with the switches of a monstrous PA system. She cranks up the volume, the song starts, scenes of fields and concrete bridges, presumably romantic sites where lovers meet in North Korea, flash across the screen. Without even a trickle of sweat or nervous hesitation, Chloe bursts into song. It is beautiful, sentimental and strangely off-key in a lost haunting kind of way. The customers, most of them Koreans, carry on eating, largely ignoring the ethereal apparition on stage, floating in front of images of her fatherland. It is moving. The song ends and Chloe scuttles off stage. But this is only the beginning of an evening of North Korean entertainment.

The food arrives in double time and there’s even Coke on the menu. I order one. A can arrives. No, the girls don’t mind selling American drinks – evil drinks.
Hong smiles regretfully, “We don’t get many American guests in here. In fact, I have never met one.”
Hong has had an excellent elocution teacher.

While I make small talk about the greatest country in the world, the other waitresses have all lined up on the polished wooden floor next to the doors. The music lurches out of the PA system, standard Asian game-boy karaoke and the girls start dancing. It’s a chorus line. Oh no, it’s an acid trip. It’s the Sound Of Music gone bad. It’s one of Yoko Ono’s wicked installations. It’s not quite right. The song stops and one of the waitresses remains alone on the dance floor, a violin against her shoulder. The violin has a pick-up, the backing track is a racket and the echo chamber of the PA system turns North Korean ‘classic soft’ into the Hendrix version ‘All along the Watchtower’.
It’s amazing, it is hardcore, it is pure. Not a thought is given to commercial potential, whether the audience will like it or what it actually means. It’s Pyongyang Punk. Bloated by the imperialist soft drink and deflated by the Stalinist Vanessa Mae protégé, I can’t imagine how anything could top a performance like this. That’s because I have not been to North Korea.
Then Chloe and Hong are suddenly up there in the harsh lights, their slender hands grasping the microphones. I can see Chloe flicking the switch on hers. Did they train these women with electric chairs? Abominable thoughts run through my mind.

The song starts, the girls sing, the echo chamber has the effect of a communist brainwashing elixir that shoots straight to the heart and explodes in my mind like a thousand shots of China white. I can’t understand the words, but if the song were played backwards it would sound something like ‘No one gets out here alive’. It sounds like it’s backwards. I lose all sense of time and will. I cannot tell whether the song is 30 seconds or eight minutes long. The voices of Chloe and Hong mesmerize me. The food is great, the ambience is cosy. The Coke tastes like shit.
Chloe leans off the stage and whispers into her microphone “please check your receipt numbers. Tonight’s winner for a lucky draw is 666. The lucky winner will receive lifetime Korean citizenship and a stipend to the Pyongyang film school.”
I look at my receipt. 666. I am stunned. The pancake and fish are churning in my stomach. Despite the ice cold air-con I start to sweat. The lights are too bright. The hair on the back of my head is standing up. The girls, in their trim black skirts, are moving in like socialist tarantulas, weaving their propaganda web as they come. I turn to look at my reflection on the muted windows. The dirty, lively Cambodian street outside, where I can spot young kids sniffing glue in the doorway of a new shopping center, seems remote – a beautiful utopia in fact. My reflection is far less reassuring. I have begun to grow a long wavy perm.
Chloe whispers, “Come and tell me your secrets.”
Evil is closing in. Will I be able to save the world?