in the backstreet areas of Pyongyang are surrounded by walls.
He explained to me that 100,000 apartments in high-rise buildings should be built by 2012, and that each flat should be at least 1,075 square feet (100 square meters) with what sounded like Western-style kitchens and bathrooms. On the balconies, the units would even have storage areas for kimchi jars.
I thought this was an excessively bold plan, taking into account the country’s dearth of resources like steel, cement, and scaffolding. I followed the developments with interest from a distance; by the time they were to be completed, I would not be living in Pyongyang anymore, but I would surely see any results on my future visits.
Despite resource scarcities, it turned out that, in true North Korean fashion, thousands of able-bodied workers were “mass mobilized.” Universities, for instance, were shut down in 2011 so students could work on construction sites until April 2012.
It was truly a remarkable spectacle of the ability of this government, and its people, to so swiftly get things done. The government called it the “New Pyongyang Speed Battle,” in a reference to the massive reconstruction campaign after the Korean War. The state cleared out land with short notice and evicted residents to their relatives’ and other apartments. With hundreds of laborers putting efforts into each edifice on rotating shifts, a new floor popped up every two days.
On the other hand, the facelift had an underbelly. The number of fatalities among untrained workers had probably not been small, although the exact numbers go unreported. And the quality of new buildings has sometimes visibly suffered from the hasty construction. I occasionally noticed cracks on walls and ceilings or paint dripping down onto window glass. Then there’s the very visible strain on the capital’s aging infrastructure, which has created regular interruptions of the supply of power, water, and heating.
But for the government, this revolutionary project gets the job done. Visitors are often taken aback at the city’s modern façade, belying the common description of this capital being stuck in a terrible Stalinist age.
My walks through Pyongyang during the day and night gave me glimpses into apartments, and therefore clues about daily life. Whether affluent or poor, North Koreans seemed to live simply and with few possessions. Although the size and quality of the predominantly state-owned houses varied according to the social status of the dwellers, a typical apartment had two cozy rooms plus a small kitchen not exceeding 325 square feet (30 square meters).
In smaller cities and in the countryside, where there were more one-story houses for families, the living rooms were slightly larger. As four to five family members often lived together, the living room was also used for sleeping. In less luxurious apartment blocks, dwellers shared toilets and showers, which were usually one each per floor.
Most homes do not yet have a telephone. According to 2011 statistics, there were 1.1 million fixed-line phones installed in this country of 24 million inhabitants. They are predominantly used in government offices, state-owned enterprises, and collective farms. The country has been considered a technology backwater, and I have come across hand-cranked phones for communications in a number of facilities. However, three years after the launch in 2008 of a telecom joint venture’s 3G cell phone network, it hit 1 million subscribers. According to a study of the U.S.-based Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, 60 percent of Pyongyang residents aged twenty to fifty now use cell phones. By 2013 the number of subscribers doubled to 2 million.
Overall, the quality of life improved during my seven-year stay. I eventually noticed more exhaust pipes from makeshift heating devices heating what would otherwise have been bitterly cold apartments in the winter. More balconies were used by families to cultivate animals to be sold for a profit or to generate meat for the family, a sign of the privatization of the socialist economy discussed in depth later.
Items as diverse as war memorabilia and Japanese Hello Kitty bags were scattered around the rooms. To cope with frequent power cuts after nightfall, flashlights, candles, and matches were common. When I was in charge of a pharmaceutical joint venture, we took advantage of that need by giving away small pocket flashlights as promotional gifts. They were quite a hit, a small gadget that solved a regular problem for North Koreans.
Blankets were another household item, providing warmth during the harsh winters. The walls were usually covered with rough wall-paper from recycled paper, and floors used to be covered by paper. They’re now more often covered with plastic-like vinyl, which is cheaper than hardwood, tiles, or carpets and more durable and easy to keep clean.
Like the country itself, apartments were kept meticulously clean. Until the 1990s a so-called sanitation month was proclaimed by the government twice a year, during which all homes had to be repaired and scrubbed down. Now campaigns are less frequently held and less followed, but homes are still amazingly tidy given the shortage of water and detergent.
Everything had a cover: a cover for the radio, the fan, the sewing machine, and the television, often beautifully embroidered, as many North Korean women learn to embroider during their childhood. A large number of dwellers used to embellish their homes not only with embroidery but also with potted houseplants and even aquariums with various kinds of fish. In a country better known for its food shortages than for its livability, there were popular specialized shops that sold aquariums and accessories. It was not the North Korea I saw on CNN. Nor was it the “heart of darkness” that I anxiously awaited ten years ago.
Chapter 2
Malaise into Opportunity
When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is
composed of two characters. One represents
danger and the other represents opportunity.
—John F. Kennedy
How did North Korea get where it is today, carrying through the end of the cold war, surviving a devastating famine, and remaining a bastion of communism in a world rapidly turning to the free market?
In the 1960s, there were only two industrialized countries in Asia: Japan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The latter was founded in 1948 on the ashes of Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945, following the devastation of World War II.
But despite all the destruction and mayhem, socialist North Korea managed to prop up one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies from the 1950s until the beginning of the 1970s. For a long time the country’s growth and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rivaled that of capitalist South Korea’s, which for a long time was an agrarian and fractious state that depended on the American military presence for protection.
North Korea bolsters a mainly state-run economy, with all bodies reporting to one of three national pillars: the Korean Workers’ Party, the Korean People’s Army, and the Council of Ministers headed by the prime ministers.
But more interesting are the North Korean companies that resemble the South Korean chaebol, conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai. The government oversees some 200 businesses that, by North Korean standards, would be considered medium and large enterprises, employing at least a few hundred but in some cases more than 10,000 employees.
Some groups, such as the Korea Sonbong Export & Import Company (exporting marine products and importing foodstuffs) and the Korea SEK Company (exporting cartoon films on order and importing movies and fine-art materials), are more focused on a handful of core operations. Other conglomerates have diversified into a wide range of non-core business activities, such as the Korea Rungrado General Trading Corporation (Sindok spring water, marine products, knitwear, clothes, metallic and nonmetallic minerals, natural shell
