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| North Korean waitresses in Pyongyang Restaurant in Phnom Penh (Photo: Slate) |
DPA
Phnom Penh - Ongoing tension on the Korean Peninsula has reached Korean eateries in Cambodia, local media reported Thursday, with boycotts of North Korean restaurants by South Korean tour groups and allegations of reprisal raids on South Korean restaurants by North Korean 'agents.'
Park Jeong Yeon, who heads the Phnom Penh branch of the Korean Association of Cambodia, said the sinking of the warship Cheonan last year, in which 46 South Korean sailors died, provided the spark. South Korea blamed the North for the torpedo attack.
'Afterwards, the embassy of (South) Korea recommended to Korean restaurants and tourist agencies not to go to North Korean restaurants,' he told The Phnom Penh Post newspaper.
Pyongyang, which denied any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, operates two restaurants in the Cambodian tourist hub of Siem Reap and one in Phnom Penh. They are part of a chain of outlets in a number of countries that earns the communist regime much-needed hard currency.
Patrons at North Korea's diners are treated to dance and music by trusted North Korean waitresses as well as dishes such as Pyongyang cold noodles.
But belligerence on the peninsula - most recently the North's shelling of the South's Yeonpyeong Island in November - saw Park's association distribute signs and stickers to South Korean restaurants in Cambodia condemning Pyongyang's actions.
Two South Korean restaurant owners claimed that 'North Korean agents' then raided their businesses and tore down stickers and signs critical of the Stalinist state.
The North Korean embassy in Phnom Penh was unavailable for comment.
But a spokesman for the South Korean embassy denied Seoul was seeking a boycott of Pyongyang's diners in Cambodia.
'The recent actions, including the boycott of North Korean restaurants, were completely voluntary decisions by the South Korean citizens in Siem Reap to express their regret over the North Korean provocations,' the spokesman said.
Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism said about 290,000 South Koreans visited Cambodia last year - up nearly 50 per cent - making it the industry's second-most important source country.
5 comments:
They must enjoy the freedom of living in Phnom Penh unless they're otherwise monitered around the clock by a Snake Head.
The second from the right is mine, leave her alone.
I want my kid know how to build the missil and kick Hun's family to Hanoi.
good restaurant, i go every week, make me happy, you must go..
North korean girls won't dare to look at Khmer because their too Dark! They don't like dark skin guys you moron keep dreaming! But they do like your money and if you can send them to America so they can leave you HAHAHAH!
Actually, opposites attract!
This is one of the reasons why Chinese men since Angkor era who visited Cambodia never returned to China. And it is the same reason why Hanoi has been flooding the country with young women, to sap Khmer men's moral and vigour, including top army generals and government ministers, as domestic 'maids' and 'secretaries' etc! They are part of Vietnam's age-old forward army of 'agent-provocateurs' in civilian garb.
To be fair there are ordinary Vietnamese who came to settle down in Cambodia for mostly economic reasons, but Cambodia's open door policy towards her eastern neighbour since 1979 (7th January 1979, one of the 'parents' of modern Cambodia, we are told, and how depressing eh?) has also helped Vietnam to ease or dispose of her own economic and social burdens to a considerable extent as these associate themselves with unemployment, drug abuse, gambling, human trafficking, prostitution and related organised vices that had once been the other, darker side of places like war-time Saigon and other Vietnamese cities.
For men with even a little means and privilege but loose morals, Cambodia can be an intoxicating Sodom and Gomorra of debauchery and lost souls. So much so that even before Khmer men (not all, obviously) begin to recover their senses and sanity, they will have discovered those enormous border posts (nay, monuments!) outside the Royal Palace or Wat Phnom!
By then they will need more than a strong dose of black coffee imported from Dalat to stand upright again - assuming that is, the coffee is not poisoned by one of those lovely young maids . . .
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