N. Korea Trying Hard to Be a Good Neighbor

It is so cold inside the restaurant that the waitresses are sporting long underwear beneath the short green polyester skirts of their uniforms.

When customers inquire about heat, a waitress with a brisk military demeanor snaps that there is only an air conditioner. No apologies are offered.

Such kinks still need to be worked out at the newly opened Kumgang Hall restaurant. Even at midday, the interior, decorated with dark wood paneling and beaded curtains, doesn’t have enough light to illuminate a menu -- not that there is one. Still, the $9 lunch of steamed crab, dumplings and bibimbap, a rice and vegetable dish, is surprisingly tasty.

And the mere fact that the restaurant exists is an achievement. Kumgang Hall is one of the first North Korean-run restaurants devoted exclusively to South Korean tourists, and it is part of a new wave of cooperation projects between the estranged halves of the peninsula.

Even as a dispute has been raging with the United States over North Korea’s nuclear program, North and South Koreans have been making huge strides in their relations. Last week, they opened the first civilian road through the demilitarized zone that separates them. The thoroughfare is expected to bring more than 300,000 visitors annually to a 4-year-old tourist enclave around Mt. Kumgang, on the southeastern coast of North Korea.

In recent weeks, two North Korean-run restaurants have opened here for the South Koreans. A third is scheduled to open soon. Development is expected to begin in a few months on a golf course and a ski lift. Estranged North and South Korean relatives are scheduled to meet here next weekend.

Groundbreaking is also expected soon for a huge South Korean-run industrial park in Kaesong, a city 32 miles into North Korea.

The sudden burst of enthusiasm from often balky North Korea gives rise to suspicions that the regime in the capital, Pyongyang, is hoping to boost relations with South Korea as a counterweight to a rapidly unraveling relationship with the United States.

“They want to give the impression that if it were not for George W. Bush, Condi Rice and Dick Cheney, things would be really rosy on the Korean peninsula, and so they are making it look as rosy as possible,” said Lee Chung Min, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul.

The opening of the road through the DMZ on Friday was accompanied by much fanfare from the North Koreans, who staged a display of affection for the estranged compatriots with whom they fought a war from 1950 to 1953 that left 2 million people dead.

On the hiking trails around Mt. Kumgang, the often taciturn North Korean park guides turned on the charm. Many of the female guides were dressed up for the occasion and wearing makeup and bright red lipstick, and they flirted with visiting South Korean dignitaries. Inside another tourist restaurant, one so new that the white paint on the walls came off on customers’ sleeves, the North Korean staff members emphasized their eagerness to serve South Korean guests.

“We are genuinely welcoming of our guests from the South. We opened this restaurant with the love of our everlasting greatest leader,” said Kim Chol, the 45-year-old restaurant manager, referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. “The ultimate purpose of this restaurant is not to make a profit. We are interested in serving proper meals to South Korean tourists, or even foreign tourists. It is for the national goal of promoting reconciliation, not money.”

At the tourist compound near Mt. Kumgang, the North Koreans brought out a marching band and various officials, who gave grandiloquent speeches about the brotherly love between North and South.

“We show our love this day in celebration of the fact that we are so much closer to reunification,” said Kim Chung Dok, 51, beaming as he watched a brass band he manages performing for the visiting dignitaries. “The only impediment to unification is the United States.”

Almost any North Korean one chats with here will quickly launch into an anti-American diatribe, blaming the United States for everything from the Korean War to the showdown over the North’s nuclear ambitions. North Koreans seem to believe that by cementing their ties to South Korea, they can protect themselves from a preventive strike by the United States against their nuclear facilities.

The reasoning is that the United States would not attack North Korea without the explicit approval of South Korea, one of America’s closest allies and host to 38,000 U.S. troops. South Korean President-elect Roh Moo Hyun, who is to be inaugurated next Tuesday, has pledged to continue the “sunshine policy” of engagement led by outgoing President Kim Dae Jung. Roh has said that North Korea should be persuaded with “carrots, not sticks,” to relinquish its nuclear ambitions.

“Do you think that Roh Moo Hyun can stop the United States from attacking us?” asked 30-year-old Kim Hwang Hyok, a North Korean guide who works at a lake near Mt. Kumgang. “Will the opening of the land route between South and North help to end the nuclear problems? Will it prevent a war? I hope so. We don’t want a war.”

Another motive for the North Koreans to roll out the welcome mat to South Koreans is economics. The United States, the largest donor of food aid to North Korea, delivered its last shipment in December and has no immediate plans to resume deliveries. The North Koreans hope that donations from South Korea can make up for the loss.

More immediately, the tours to Mt. Kumgang are an important source of foreign currency for the North Koreans.

Hyundai Asan, the South Korean conglomerate that runs the tours, admitted Sunday that it had paid about $500 million to North Korea for the right to do business here and to promote a landmark summit between the leaders of North and South Korea in June 2000. A scandal over the money has been unfolding in Seoul in recent weeks, and North Koreans need to reassure the South Korean public that the money was not ill spent.

Hyundai, whose late founder was born in North Korea and who later fled south, began offering the tours to Mt. Kumgang in November 1998 with the hope of promoting relations between North and South. An estimated 550,000 tourists, most of them South Koreans, have visited since. Until the opening of the land route, visitors arrived by cruise ship. But many South Koreans were disappointed that they had minimal contact with North Koreans. All of the employees in the fenced-off tourist compound were South Korean, Chinese or Philippine.

The newly opened restaurants are government-run and staffed by North Koreans. They are designed to give South Korean tourists a more authentic North Korean experience, even though they admittedly serve far larger portions than an ordinary citizen of the famine-prone country can imagine.

“Food in a restaurant, of course, is different than in a home,” said a North Korean security official, deftly handling a question about the food shortages in North Korea.

Another official, who also refused to give his name, piped up, “I don’t like meat anyway.”