Land is growing in popularity as an investment for North Korean officials and the newly affluent elite. As a result of this shift in investment emphasis, demand for single-storey houses in desirable urban areas has begun to outstrip that for apartments, Daily NK has learned.

As in South Korea, a nice apartment has long been a symbol of power and reputation in North Korea. However, single-storey houses offer the opportunity for higher returns on investment thanks to the footprint of the land upon which they sit. This has even led to cases of relatively nice apartments being bartered for much older single-storey houses.

A Daily NK source in South Pyongan Province reported on the 24^th, ��Apartments used to be thought of as the best choice among all the housing options, but this has now shifted to houses. Powerful folks have come down to single-storey homes; they��ve all become ddangjjigi [owners of significant areas of land].��

��The middle classes still prefer their apartments,�� the source acknowledged, ��But the way that cadres and other moneyed elites are looking toward single-storey houses cannot be overstated. All you do is fence in 60 pyeong [a Korean unit of measurement equaling 198sq. meters] of land round the house on the pretext of having a vegetable garden; if you do that then everything within the fence becomes yours."

The source further explained how some provincial Party officials in South Pyongan Province have started working with officials from the state Rural Management Committee to fence off plots of land for themselves.

��In this province, there are these Party officials who earned foreign currency in Russia before they came back. Now they��ve started coming out in ones and twos from the apartments that were given to them by the Party. They say this is because they want to set up second homes. Working in conjunction with the Rural Management Committee, they've built twin homes on land that isn��t registered with the state; one for the family of the Rural Management Committee official, and one for the Party cadre and his family.��

��A month ago the manager of a local factory bartered his apartment for a small house next to a main road," the source further recalled. "Given that the occupant of the house was living hand to mouth, it could not have been worth more than $5000, whereas the apartment would have been worth something like $30,000.��

The buyer immediately began tearing the existing structure down to build a new one in its place, having chosen the property for its parking and location near trade routes. ��The new owner is obviously someone with one eye on the future,�� she mused.

It is estimated that a single-storey house near a public market can be bought today for around $5000, whereas the advance purchase of an apartment in the vicinity of a railway station is approximately $20,000. Therefore, more and more people are seeking to buy the former in order to tear it down and replace it with a new structure. The source noted that construction companies are also recording good profits as a result.

The source speculated on the cause of this shift, saying that it stems partly from people��s growing awareness of the value of land, which is one result of outside information flowing into the country. ��Even the small amounts of information that people can get hold of in markets or wherever is making them see that land prices are going to rise faster than anything else. Even if the house is shabby, you should go for a place with land; these days, hoping for a nice apartment is just pretentiousness.��

However, there is some agitation at the rush toward land, the source said. ��There are these people building houses at this juncture, a time when other people are going hungry because they can��t even buy the rice for one meal a day,�� she conceded.