BEIJING (AFP) — South Koreans hoping to taste authentic North Korean cuisine abroad may be out of luck, with Pyongyang-run restaurants across northern China saying they will refuse to serve their capitalist compatriots.

Dotted throughout China and Southeast Asia, North Korean-run restaurants dish up culinary staples like cold noodles and kimchi pancakes to customers who are typically more interested in the novelty factor than the cuisine.

Staffed by waitresses hand-picked from the country's elite for loyalty — and who often perform musical numbers for customers — they are a major source of funds for Pyongyang.

And for South Koreans, they have long offered a quirky opportunity to break bread with their longtime foe while abroad — and enjoy some schmaltzy song and dance on the side.

But half a dozen branches in China, from restaurants in the capital Beijing to cities in the borderland, told AFP they would not serve South Koreans.

"This rule came into effect this year," said one Chinese staff member at Ryugyong restaurant in Dandong — a stone's throw from the diplomatically isolated nation.

"We have to comply," said the staff member, who did not give their name.

"There is a regulation from the North Korean embassy: None of the North Korean restaurants in Dandong are permitted to serve South Koreans."

Hostile
The rules, meanwhile, appear to be applied inconsistently: Eateries surveyed by AFP in Shanghai, Changchun and Hanoi in neighboring Vietnam said they had no issue with South Koreans dining there.

But others were downright hostile at the mention of South Korean guests. "We hate them!" said one North Korean worker in Shenyang — a hub in northeast China where North and South Koreans frequently rub shoulders.

"If you bring a South Korean friend, we will not accept them… and won't serve them."

North Korea's embassy in Beijing did not respond to a request for comment.

One former South Korean government official said he was asked to leave a North Korean restaurant in Dandong after staff heard him speaking their shared language with a friend.

"The tone was very hostile," said the man, who asked not to be named. "I felt very frustrated, and awkward. I felt sorry for them."

Before visiting Dandong, he said he had heard that North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un had instructed restaurants to stop serving South Koreans.

These bans have happened before, he said — usually when inter-Korean relations fall to a low ebb.

Nuke fears
"But knowing it and experiencing it is different," he said. "Being rejected to your face… that's really bad."

After a brief easing of tensions in the late 2010s helped by three summits between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea's then-president Moon Jae-in, relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have nosedived.