The Norks export capitalism--really

Asia Times:

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia and BANGKOK, Thailand - North Korean capitalism is thriving - just not inside North Korea. Pyongyang has steadily established a string of legitimate and less legitimate front companies across East and Southeast Asia, aimed at earning the cash-strapped government badly needed hard currency. And, by all indications, business is booming.

Consider, for instance, Cafe Pyongyang, one of Vladivostok's most popular eateries. It is so popular, in fact, that there are plans to build a new restaurant in the shape of a North Korean peasant's hut, similar to the one where the late leader Kim Il-sung was born in 1912. Here, gracefully clothed North Korean women serve up traditional Korean fare, while patrons sing popular Korean tunes.

Similarly themed restaurants have popped up in Beijing and Shanghai in China, and Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in

Cambodia. But this by no means represents a North Korean business diaspora similar to the ethnic-Chinese community that now controls a large swath of Southeast Asia's economy. Rather, the Pyongyang government owns and operates all of the eateries - and their regional interests reach far beyond restaurants.

North Koreans are becoming skilled capitalists outside their own strict centrally controlled country. For instance, they own a 15-story, 160-room hotel, complete with a nightclub and a sauna, in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang. There, government entrepreneurs also run a North Korean-owned computer software company and an Internet service provider. Even more imaginatively, a company in Dandong, a Chinese city just across the Yalu River from North Korea, acquired the exclusive rights to sell North Korean medicines on the international market - including a brand called Cheongchun No 1, a home-made version of Viagra.

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There is much more.