North Korea’s ‘Ever Victorious’ companies face China axe

beijing: From restaurants with singing waitresses, to secluded traders in back alleys, North Korean businesses in Beijing face a precarious start to the New Year with a looming, sanctions-linked January deadline to shut up shop.

Accounting for 90% of North Korea’s trade, China is a major outpost for what little financial and economic interests its secretive ally has abroad.

But Beijing – fed up with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests – has given North Korean businesses and non-profit organisations until Jan 9 to shut down in accordance with United Nations sanctions, the commerce ministry said.

In visits to a dozen North Korean companies in the Chinese capital, AFP found that many owners and staff were unsure whether they would have to leave.

Near the North’s massive embassy complex in Beijing, where a red propaganda banner proclaims “Long live dear supreme leader Kim Jong-un,” four trading companies are run out of ground floor shop fronts in a back alley.

Each door is emblazoned with a silver placard and the name of the occupant: Ever Victorious Trading, Korea Sungjon Trading, Korea SEK Company and Korean Five Rings Trading.

Ever Victorious is registered to a man named Chen Shire, though the middle-aged man who opened its door declined to give his name or say if he was affiliated to the nearby embassy.

The UN says the North’s diplomats commonly abuse their diplomatic status to engage in business.

“We buy essentials that are available here,” the man said, declining to elaborate on what his company traded in.

Inside his office boxes labelled as electric rice cookers were stacked to the ceiling.

“We’re doing fine based on our self-sufficient, independent economy,” he said, though when asked about US President Donald Trump, he admitted the expanding sanctions were having an impact.

“Because of Trump our country is having such a hard time. We despise him very much,” he said.

“But no matter how much Trump bullies us, we have our own power to go on.”

He could not say if the trading company would shut down come January.

A commerce ministry official said that all North Korean businesses had been notified they must close.

“If they are still operating after Jan 9, they will be operating illegally,” the official said.

The UN resolution does not set a firm date. But UN diplomats said they were eyeing a Jan 12 deadline for joint ventures and cooperative entities to shut down, in line with the 120-day timetable in the September resolution.

Restaurants with singing and dancing North Koreans were once popular among Beijing’s nouveau riche and wealthy North Koreans visiting the city.

Some opened as joint ventures, with the North Koreans overseeing the entertainment and food while the Chinese side supplied financing. — AFP