Marketing In North Korea (20)
The Weight of a Name, the Taste of Politics: The Story of Okryugwan
Jeon Byung-kil
Senior Consultant of YESInnovation
former of Secretary General of UniKorea Foundation
A Cold Noodle Craze Begins
In 2018, something surprising happened. During a meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a lighthearted comment about a famous North Korean dish: Pyongyang naengmyeon, a cold noodle soup. He said the noodles had “come a long way” to South Korea. After that, people in South Korea became very curious about the dish—and especially about the restaurant it came from: Okryugwan, a well-known restaurant in Pyongyang.
But the story of Okryugwan in South Korea had already begun almost 20 years earlier.
Two Okryugwans in Seoul?
In 1999, two restaurants in Seoul opened using the name Okryugwan. One opened in May in a neighborhood called Yeoksam. It served about 20 kinds of traditional North Korean food, including naengmyeon, hot rice soup, and grilled beef. According to news reports, many of the ingredients—and even kitchen supplies—were brought from North Korea. The head chef was a Korean living in Japan, connected to a pro-North Korean group.
Around the same time, another Okryugwan opened in the neighborhood of Gaepo. Both restaurants claimed they had the right to use the name Okryugwan. The first was opened by a company (let’s call it Company A), which said it had signed a deal with a Japanese company connected to the real Okryugwan. The second restaurant was opened by Company B, which said it had made a deal through a Chinese partner.
Company A took Company B to court, asking for them to stop using the name. But the court rejected the request. The judge said that since both companies had worked separately to open their restaurants, it wasn’t clear who had the “real” rights to the name. In fact, the judge even said it wasn’t certain whether either restaurant was truly a branch of the original Okryugwan in Pyongyang.
Soon after, the real Okryugwan in North Korea made a strong statement: it had never approved any restaurants in South Korea, and it called both Seoul restaurants fake and dishonest. Over time, both restaurants closed.
A New Try in 2018
After the 2018 North-South Korea summit, talk of opening a real Okryugwan branch in South Korea came up again. A South Korean peace organization worked with North Korea and the local government in Gyeonggi Province to plan a new restaurant.
According to their agreement, chefs from the original Okryugwan would come to South Korea to cook, using North Korean ingredients. Several cities, including Goyang, Paju, and Dongducheon, were interested in hosting the restaurant.
But again, the plan ran into problems. Back in the 1990s, someone had already registered the name Okryugwan as a trademark in South Korea. Without that person's permission, the name couldn’t be used. On top of that, political tensions between the two Koreas made it difficult to move forward. In the end, the new restaurant never opened.
North Korea’s Own Plan
Instead of working with South Korea, North Korea decided to promote Okryugwan and naengmyeon on its own. In 2022, North Korea successfully registered “the tradition of eating Pyongyang naengmyeon” as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. It also registered the name Okryugwan as a trademark with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
North Korean media now presents Okryugwan as the symbol of authentic Pyongyang naengmyeon, and promotes it as part of their national pride and cultural identity. Rather than sharing it with South Korea, they are building it as their own global brand.