But even when the doors are open, neighbors say the young women have little contact with the skin world as they’re shuttled to and from their accommodation.
“I saw women taken to and from the complex, but they never walked down that road or talked to anyone,” said Jack Liew, who runs an auto repair shop that shares a back alley with the restaurant.
“When I tried to look into the backyard, the door was covered with vinyl and there was nothing to look at,” he said.
Other residents also claimed to have seen North Korean staff but never spoken to them, describing the waitresses only as “very nice.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum are elites who’re also low-profile but are well aware of the killing, said Alex Hwang, a South Korean who chairs the Malaysian branch of the Seoul-backed National Union Advisory Council.
Hwang runs an upscale restaurant within the Malaysian capital that he says is popular with outstanding North Korean expatriates, including Jong-Nam, who died at Kuala Lumpur airport in a poisoning attack on Monday.
Their business interests include computer animation corporations, production and a few black market activity, he said.
“Most of them have Rolex watches, they drive nice cars, their children go to normal schools they usually have the most recent gadgets… They are like several other entrepreneur,” said Hwang of the roughly 250-strong group.
However, after they return home, they are going to think twice before sharing the news of the murder with friends or family.
Every North Korean family living abroad reports to the local embassy every month to report, and upon their return, they undergo “re-education” before they’ll return to most of the people, he added.
On Saturday, about 40 North Koreans went to the embassy in Kuala Lumpur, South Korea’s Chosun TV reported, as its journalists questioned the group in regards to the killing, which Seoul’s intelligence chief said was carried out by agents from the North.
Analysts consider Kim Jong-nam might be seen as a rival to his younger siblings in a dynastic regime that has never loosened its grip on power in three generations.
When asked whether Pyongyang may need been responsible, one North Korean replied, “That’s bullshit (nonsense),” before walking away and telling the reporter to depart him alone.
The North Korean ambassador mentioned “hostile forces” working within the assassination investigation and accused Seoul of defaming Pyongyang to divert attention from the country’s corruption scandal.
The incident quickly cooled relations between North Korea and Malaysia, which had been unusually warm because of a mutual agreement on visa-free travel for visitors.
Up to 100,000 North Koreans are believed to be working abroad, and their remittances provide a beneficial source of foreign currency for the isolated regime.
North Korea commentator Park Sokeel said the Pyongyang Koryo waitresses likely had no idea in regards to the killing because staff living outside the closed state are kept in check and their media access is restricted to approved material.
“They will most likely be under the strict control of a North Korean company where they only interact with each other and will not be allowed to leave the premises,” he said.
The same is true for miners and staff in distant parts of Malaysia, said Park, director of research and strategy on the human rights campaign group Liberty for North Korea.
And even when staff did notice the international press, they’d have difficulty understanding the news because most wouldn’t know that their leader had an older half-brother.
“It’s not even an issue of whether people know he died, because they didn’t even know he was born,” he said.
This article appeared within the print edition of the South China Morning Post as: North Korean emigrants under control
