[Correction: Brendan is right (see comments). I completely misread the story. It’s an indigenous South Korean business; KFC was only mentioned as a potential competitor, but one with no actual reported interest in North Korea. My apologies.]
You have to just love how predictable a certain, shallow class of journalists can be. If you so much as suggest putting an Delimanjoo stand or a Wondoo Coffee machine in the Koryo Hotel, the journalists will flock to you, lavish you with free publicity, declare the Grand Opening of North Korea for the hundredth time this decade, and competely miss the irony of anyone doing so in the land of trickle-up economics, where half of the population is stalked by famine.
According to this piece in the Washington Post, KFC’s [corrected: a South Korean fried chicken franchise] is about to move into Pyongyang, although his hosts have insisted on some linguistic and stylistic changes to the packaging. I wonder if it will end up something like this (click to enlarge):
Funny, I always thought the South Korean version of Colonel Sanders came out looking a lot like Ho Chi Minh.
KFC is a division of Pepsico. I’m not sure what if any connection this enterprise will actually have with KFC itself, although I have to imagine that KFC’s lawyers wrote a franchise contract that gives them control over the use of its formulas and processes, or the establishment of other chicken businesses. You can contact their corporate offices with your WTF? inquiries here.
With so many journos who report about North Korea – and then move on – their view of the story is unsurprisingly superficial. Some probably don’t even know that such places as Camp 22 exist, which means they have no business reporting on North Korea at all. Or, they might be unconcerned about the idea of supporting a regime that would run such a place. Or maybe they’re doing her best to help Kim Jong Il keep the place a secret.
My deepest thanks to whoever created that image and saved me several hours of photoshopping. Eventually, there will be no need to create new content because everything will already be pre-made and posted on the Internet. I mean, what are the odds that someone would already have done that?
