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The Gaze upon the Representation of Representation: Chinese Perceptions of North Korean Restaurants and “North Koreanness”

  • Asia Review
  • Abbr : SNUACAR
  • 2026, 16(1), pp.133~169
  • Publisher : 아시아연구소
  • Research Area : Social Science > Social Science in general
  • Received : October 15, 2025
  • Accepted : March 31, 2026
  • Published : April 30, 2026

JIN LAN 1

1서울대학교 아시아연구소 동북아시아센터

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Despite intensified international sanctions on North Korea’s overseas economic activities, including UN sanctions, and the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korean restaurants that began operating in China, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and rapidly expanded to major cities worldwide in the 2000s continue to operate—albeit in reduced numbers—with dozens still functioning in China. This study analyzes the representational strategies of North Korea, the gaze of Chinese consumers, and the interaction between them, focusing on North Korean restaurants in China that continue to serve as crucial channels for foreign currency acquisition even during this transitional period. As transnational consumption spaces located outside North Korean territory, these restaurants serve the dual purpose of regime propaganda and foreign currency generation. However, given their nature as consumption spaces, they face the inevitable challenge of considering not only the supplier’s (North Korea’s) agenda but also the consumers’ (Chinese patrons’) gaze and tastes. North Korean restaurants actively employ gendered strategies to project images that counter prevailing perceptions of nuclear weapons and dictatorship. While constructing an image of a friendly and artistic North Korea through female employees’ service and performances, they simultaneously maintain contradictory rules such as photography prohibitions and bans on political conversation. This “contradictory representation” constitutes an inherent paradox of North Korean restaurants. Female employees are selected as elites from high-ranking cadre families and produce symbolic capital of “mystique” through performances in which they are identified as artists. This represents a key strategy for continuously securing “curiosity capital” regarding the closed state of North Korea, which forms the profit base of these establishments. However, risks emerge in the process of “adjusting” representational strategies to accommodate Chinese consumer tastes in order to maintain curiosity capital. The incorporation of localized performance elements—Chinese popular songs, electric guitars, jazz dance—intensifies gender display while simultaneously jeopardizing the authenticity of “North Koreanness.” Institutionally, the increasing prevalence of Chinese-owned restaurants and difficulties in restricting South Korean patrons pose ongoing challenges to North Korean restaurants’ representational strategies. Chinese consumers’ perceptions of North Korean restaurants operate within the historical context of PRC-DPRK relations formed since the Cold War era—specifically within a gendered hierarchical structure of China (masculine)-North Korea (feminine). This can be conceptualized as “Gendered Orientalism,” through which Chinese patrons demonstrate ambivalent attitudes of simultaneously recognizing economic hierarchy between China and North Korea while respecting and mystifying North Korea through these restaurant experiences.

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