A source says North Korean authorities are in a state of shock after flaws were discovered at a construction site in Pyongyang, part of a larger project to build 10,000 new homes this year.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has designated the undertaking an “important political project.”
A Daily NK source in North Korea said on Wednesday the country’s “construction command” checked the work from Aug. 16 and found flaws in three buildings in the Songsin District construction site. “Rather than giving the construction a passing grade, they began a sweeping inspection,” he said.
At the groundbreaking ceremony on Mar. 23, Kim Jong Un officially declared that the state would solve the housing problem in Pyongyang by building 50,000 apartments through 2025, promising to build 10,000 apartments a year.
The year 2025 is the 80th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.
Kim laid out how construction would proceed over the next five years, saying that “10,000 homes and…public buildings will go up in Pyongyang’s Songsin District, Songhwa District, Sopo District, Kumchon District and the Sept. 9 District every year, becoming deeply meaningful monuments symbolizing the second decade of the 21st century.”
In response, North Korea mobilized the entire party, military and people to work day and night at the construction sites. Moreover, the authorities have encouraged competition between military units, government organizations and work units, ramping up construction with the goal of allowing the first residents to move in by Party Foundation Day on Oct. 10.
Now, flaws have been discovered at the Songsin District construction site. The competition and coerced rush to finish construction inevitably led to shoddy quality control, based on the source’s account.
Inspectors found that electrical and water and sewage work was not done according to plans at the construction site, where work was entrusted to professors and students from military academies and military universities. Things appear to have gone wrong despite daily, weekly and monthly checks by professional building advisers and on-site designers.
This basically amounts to “human error” brought about by rashly deploying inexperienced personnel to the construction site. However, authorities are reportedly taking greater issue with the excuses coming from onsite construction managers, who claim the rash deployment of novices made the problems “unavoidable.”
Moreover, the inspection revealed that the builders did not use materials according to both state design plans and “proper processes.” They usually substituted materials a step or two down in quality — for example, they used polyethylene pipes instead of cast iron pipes.
The source said that at the construction site workers saw no need to always use state-mandated materials since it is “an outlying district rumored to be a ‘crappy village’ with no electricity.” The decision may have been motivated by the run-down state of the area, but as a result, the quality of the new housing is suffering.
The source said locals are saying that “major repairs will follow after the race to finish the apartments is over,” that “it’s best to avoid moving into the apartments if possible.” Some have even said that the complex “could become a tomb.”
Seemingly aware of this perception, the construction command is quickly responding. First, they have ordered large-scale repair work. Moreover, they have called in the construction administrators, political officers and technical managers in the relevant district to strongly rebuke them, accusing them of having a “faulty ideological perspective.”
Having also lost face, the Ministry of Defense has launched an ideological education effort of sorts, telling personnel that “the total mobilization of the People’s Army for constructing housing in Pyongyang was due to the trust in the conscience of the officers and enlisted personnel of the People’s Army, which is infinitely loyal to the party and people.”
According to the source, the ministry says it is devising punishments for those responsible for what it calls a “serious problem.”
