BUSINESS is thriving, explains the manager of a restaurant in a posh corner of Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital. But enough of small talk—she turns instead to extol the virtues of an immense landscape painting by the entrance. Mount Paek-tae (or Changbaishan for the Chinese: “eternally white mountain”) is shown in great, snowy glory, with a wide lake and forbidding cliffs. North Korea's Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, she explains, fought the Japanese in these mountains for “15 years”. Nobody eating at “Pyongyang”, perhaps Asia's strangest restaurant chain, could be in any doubt as to the national origin of this place. Young waitresses in pale blue, ankle-length dresses, with doll-like perfect skin, each sport a blue-and-red North Korean badge. Rather firmly, they clap and sing along to karaoke sessions as images of North Korea's grandeur—tower blocks of the capital city; great arches and palaces; plunging waterfalls and more mountains—are relayed on a large screen. A yellow sign, in English, forbids photography.

From a glass cabinet in the foyer, diners can add a purchase (priced, steeply, in American dollars) from a selection of tempting goods brought from the Workers' Paradise. As well as cigarettes, ginseng, tea and souvenir badges, on offer is a powder in a packet decorated with the image of a sea lion. Apparently North Korea's answer to Viagra, it promises a cure for “genital malfunction”.

It is unlikely that Pyongyang's food alone—a variety of cold noodles, steamed vegetables, pickled cabbage—would lure more than a few Korean ex-pats, from either the North or South, who anyway have a wide range of South Korean restaurants to try in Dhaka. It is the quirkiness of the business that makes the place an apparent success, including among curious tourists and locals. Thus the restaurant serves as a relatively subtle propaganda arm for the North Korean government, and presumably earns valuable hard currency to be shipped back home.

Something must be working. The chain operates in cities in several countries, notably in China and South-East Asia, as well as in Bangladesh, and is branching out into western Europe. Nor is there a jot of hostility towards the West. The diners and waitresses on a recent night in Dhaka, for example, seemed keenest on Western songs, notably the Bee Gees and John Denver's “Country Roads”. They belted out his lyrics, in which he begs to be taken home to where he belongs in West Virginia, as austere scenes of the North Korean capital, devoid of any people, rolled by on the karaoke screen.