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North Korea Urban Life
According to reports by defectors from North Korea and
information gleaned from the limits imposed by "revolutionary
tourism," urban life in P'yongyang probably resembles that in
other East Asian cities, such as Seoul or Tokyo, in that living
space is extremely limited. Little remains of traditional,
however; architecture with its modern-style, high-rise buildings,
P'yongyang appears to lack lively neighborhoods, as well as the
local festivals and bustling market life of other Asian cities.
Spacious highways span the metropolis, but seem devoid of traffic
except for military vehicles. Unlike the residents of Tokyo and
Seoul, however, residents of P'yongyang have access to expansive
parks and green spaces
(see Architecture and City Planning
, this
ch.).
Beginning in the 1980s, several high-rise apartment complexes
were built in P'yongyang, some of them reaching forty stories.
The Kwangbok New Town, opened in 1989 as housing for
representatives to the Thirteenth World Festival of Youth and
Students, has been described as accommodating 25,000 families of
the KWP elite. A sympathetic Japanese visitor reports that units
are 110 square meters in area, with a kitchen-dining room and
three or four additional rooms. Maintenance fees (not rent) for
the housing of manual workers and office workers constitute 0.3
percent of their monthly income; utilities, including heating,
cost about 3 percent of monthly income. Heating in rural areas
during the frigid winters seems to be supplied primarily by
charcoal briquettes.
Although urban standards of living--at least in P'yongyang--
appear to be better than rural standards of living, observers
note that city shops have limited supplies of necessities.
Visitors to the capital during the celebration of Kim Il Sung's
eightieth birthday (and as well at other times), however, have
toured department stores full of goods. One widely repeated rumor
suggests that crowds of local residents are paid by the day to
throng department stores but that virtually the only goods
actually on sale for them are soap and special consignments of
notebooks. Otherwise, access to most department stores in
P'yongyang is limited to KWP members and foreigners.
Data as of June 1993
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