Kim Jong Un and North Korean media have made clear that authorities are no longer shy about showing off modern, luxurious department stores filled with items most citizens in the nominally-socialist country cannot afford — a trend exemplified in the opening of the Daesong Department Store in Pyongyang last April.

But while Pyongyang has seen a growing number of shops offering high-end foreign goods spring up in recent years, many are not widely known outside of North Korea, including one opened a decade ago by a Japanese-Korean woman from Osaka.

The Rim Mi Yong Aeguk (Patriotic