North Korea has plagiarised a popular South Korean love song and amended the lyrics to praise leader Kim Jong-Il, an online newspaper has reported. A video clip on the website of the Daily NK, operated by activists in Seoul, shows a restaurant waitress crooning the song with the original words replaced by a eulogy to Kim. Strumming a guitar and wearing a white blouse with a few buttons open at her chest, the waitress at Pyongyang's Moran restaurant intones 'Maze of Love', a song that took South Korea by storm in the 1980s. 'Oh, Mt. Paekdu, where the sun rises and the image of our General shines forever,' she sings. 'Oh, the power that nurtured my hope and my future.' 'Maze of Love' is reportedly one of Kim's favorite songs. Pyongyang invited the singer Choi Jin-Hee in 1999 and 2002 for concerts during a thaw between the two rivals. Daily NK said the video clip showed that even the isolated communist state could not escape Hallyu or the Korean Wave, a reference to the surging popularity of South Korean pop culture in Asia in recent years. Several restaurants in Pyongyang which specialise in catering to tourists allow employees to entertain customers with South Korean songs, which are officially banned among ordinary North Koreans. Most of the songs, however, have their original words altered to honour Kim in an attempt to avoid crackdowns by authorities, said the Daily NK (www.dailynk.com/english). 