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North Korea Architecture and City Planning
Arguably the most distinct and impressive form of
contemporary cultural expression in North Korea is architecture
and city planning. P'yongyang, almost completely destroyed during
the Korean War, has been rebuilt on a grand scale. Many new
buildings have been constructed during the 1980s and 1990s in
order to enhance P'yongyang's status as a capital.
Major structures are divided architecturally into three
categories: monuments, buildings that combine traditional Korean
architectural motifs and modern construction, and high-rise
buildings of a totally modern design. Examples of the first
include the
Ch'llima Statue (see Glossary);
a twenty-meter high
bronze statue of Kim Il Sung in front of the Museum of the Korean
Revolution (itself, at 240,000 square meters, one of the largest
structures in the world); the Arch of Triumph (similar to its
Parisian counterpart, although a full ten meters higher); and the
Tower of the Chuch'e Idea, 170 meters high, built on the occasion
of Kim's seventieth birthday in 1982. According to a North Korean
publication, the tower is covered with 25,550 pieces of granite,
each representing a day in the life of the "great leader."
The second architectural category makes special use of
traditional tiled roof designs and includes the People's Culture
Palace and the People's Great Study Hall, both in P'yongyang, and
the International Friendship Exhibition Hall at Myohyang-san. The
latter building displays gifts given to Kim Il Sung by foreign
dignitaries. In light of Korea's tributary relationship to China
during the Chosn Dynasty, it is significant that the section of
the hall devoted to gifts from China is the largest.
The third architectural category includes high-rise apartment
complexes and hotels in the capital. The most striking of these
buildings is the Ryugong Hotel, still unfinished in the early
1990s, and noted by some observers to be clearly leaning and
perhaps not able to be completed. Described as the world's
tallest hotel at 105 stories, its triangular shape looms over
north-central P'yongyang. The Kory Hotel is an ultramodern,
twin-towered structure forty-five stories high.
A flurry of construction occurred before celebrations of Kim
Il Sung's eightieth birthday, including the building of apartment
complexes and the Reunification Expressway, a four-lane road
connecting the capital and the Demilitarized Zone. According to a
journalist writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, the
highway is "an impressive piece of engineering" that "cuts a
straight path through mountainous terrain with 21 tunnels and 23
bridges on the 168 kilometers route to P'anmunjm." As in many
other construction projects, the military provided the labor
(see Transportation and Communications
, ch. 3).
Data as of June 1993
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