Soldiers working on the construction of homes in Hwasong District in May 2022. (Rodong Sinmun - News1)

The construction of 50,000 homes in Pyongyang — promoted as one of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s most prominent achievements — has entered its third year.

Kim announced he would build a total of 50,000 homes in the capital Pyongyang by 2025 during the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021, with the country slated to build 10,000 homes each year.

Kim’s decision to take on such a major project in Pyongyang was undergirded by the desire to achieve a dying wish of his father Kim Jong Il; namely, that he inherit and achieve the task of “building 100,000 homes in Pyongyang,” a project the elder Kim was unable to accomplish during his lifetime. The decision was also aimed at using construction projects to promote the core ideology of the Kim Jong Un era: “the people must come first.” 

According to a Daily NK reporting partner inside North Korea recently, the country’s authorities believe they have built more homes than their original targets planned for this year. In total, North Korea plans to build 50,000 homes, including ones already completed in Pyongyang’s Songsin-Songhwa and Hwasong areas, those currently under construction in the Sopo area, and others currently being planned in the city’s Kumchon area. However, the authorities predict they will exceed target numbers in each area, the reporting partner said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. 

The reporting partner also told Daily NK that lax standards in the construction process are one reason why the authorities are able to predict that they will build more homes than originally planned. 

North Korean apartments are considered completed when their walls are built and their front doors and external windows are finished. In fact, the authorities rush to pass judgement that a home is complete when just the external work is finished because once that judgement has been made, the government is no longer obligated to provide materials to further finalize the construction and can then move forward with quickly filling the homes up with the pre-determined number of households.

As a result, only about 5 to 7% of the homes in the entire 50,000 homes project have completed interiors and are fully ready to be occupied, the reporting partner said. The remaining approximately 95% of scheduled occupants must do the interior work themselves, including toilets, faucets, wallpaper, flooring and tiles. Households without the wherewithal to do the interior work themselves sometimes abandon moving in and sell their homes off instead.

A page from a 2023 calendar published by North Korea’s Foreign Languages Publishing House. Luxury apartments in the Pyongyang neighborhood of Kyongru-dong were featured on the November page. (Daily NK)

Shoddy work on the exteriors of the apartments, however, is a major issue.

“A lot of families are in an uproar because water from the sink of the home above them leaks through the ceiling,” a reporting partner in Pyongyang told Daily NK. “Perhaps because the exteriors of the homes haven’t been properly moisture-proofed, the homes were so full of moisture last winter that the wallpaper rotted.”

Recently, shoddy construction has been growing more and more rampant due to supply shortages. With materials needed for basic construction like rebar and cement in short supply, builders are frequently using cheap, low-strength materials to complete the exteriors of the buildings. 

“Since they’re trying to build lots of homes in a short period of time despite the supply shortages, they frequently mix in materials you shouldn’t use,” said the reporting partner. “People who know how the homes were built won’t move into high-rise apartments no matter how flashy the buildings look on the outside.”

Moreover, the apartments face serious electricity and water shortages. In fact, the occupants of one high-rise apartment in the Songhwa area are forced to carry rice, side dishes, water and other items up and down the stairs because the elevator does not work properly, according to the Pyongyang reporting partner.

He also told Daily NK that irregular elevator operations force scheduled occupants to pay bribes to be allotted apartments on the lower floors. With so many people avoiding the upper floors, an agency tasked with managing the allotments is promoting the idea that “you can grow healthier and live a long life free of disease by walking up and down the stairs.”

However, many people find such propaganda absurd. “People ask how the authorities can tell people to use the stairs to draw water every day when water supplies come around once in a blue moon, like holiday provisions,” another reporting partner in the country told Daily NK. “They say they can no longer walk because their joints are all worn from carrying water up the stairs.”

This all being said, some people in North Korea view the housing construction in Pyongyang in a positive light. In particular, residents of North Korea’s provincial areas are said to envy Pyongyang residents because they are able to move into modern housing, and admire how “Pyongyang is becoming a world-class city.” 

Many people moving into the newly built homes in Pyongyang complain about their circumstances, but residents of the country’s provinces see Pyongyang’s increasingly attractive-looking skyline and believe this shows that “the nation is developing.”

Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler. 

Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.  

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