Diners can pay through a mobile QR-code system.
Being impressed that they have almost 2 decades old technology is kind of telling of how bad it is. Smartphones today can be had as low as $50! Not really a sign of wealth or progress to have 20 year old technology that has now become dirt cheap.
I also bet the reason for the popularity of smartphones is that the infrastructure building a wireless network is way way cheaper today than to build an old fashioned wired phone network that everybody can access.
Last year, North Korea built 10,000 new homes in Pyongyang—more than either Los Angeles or Chicago.
Being impressed that the regime builds a crazy amount of housing in the capital city is probably based on ignorance.
For instance Romania did the same under Nicolae Ceaușescu, and then forced people to move to that.
This is probably simply prestige projects by the regime, to try to force a development that makes the country appear more modern, without having the actual economic development necessary for the change in infrastructure. At least that's what it usually is when dictators make these kinds of projects. People are merely moved from poverty in one place to poverty in another place.
North Korea didn’t turn around its economy by itself. The Kim regime fortified its energy supply and access to construction materials by sending munitions and more than 15,000 troops to the Russian front lines in the Ukraine war.
And
Many of Kim’s army of cyber thieves live in China, where they can more freely connect to the internet and operate without fear of arrest by outside authorities.
So the 2 main sources of income for North Korea are based on crimes and one of them is even only temporary.
This is not a success story, as there is nothing sustainable in this so called impressive economic development.
Outside the capital city, North Korea remains poor, with nearly half of its 26 million residents malnourished,
That's strange, if they can go to a diner, and use a smartphone to pay through a QR code system. /s
The truth is that North Korea remains extremely poor, but the regime continues with prestige projects that mostly benefit the rich in North Korea. And in North Korea rich apparently means being able to afford a smartphone, and being able to eat every day.
