The Pyongyang People’s Committee recently launched an inspection into alleged financial transactions related to the allotment of housing in the city’s Hwasong housing development, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source in the capital city said the department initiated its probe in mid-April amid rumors that “some Pyongyang residents had been making financial deals with committee officials starting five months before moving into homes in the second stage of the 10,000-home Hwasong development.”
According to the source, a handful of Pyongyang residents used their money and power to ignore the set procedures and standards for allotting homes in the second stage of the Hwasong development, buying off officials on the city people’s committee before full-scale occupancy of homes in the area began.
Pyongyang’s party committee received a complaint that the “new homes in the Hwasong area are supposed to be distributed per the courtesy of the Workers’ Party and Supreme Leader [Kim Jong Un], and personally engaging in financial transactions betrayed the party, Supreme Leader and Pyongyang residents.”
Some people even began presenting proof that dollar transactions were being made over apartments in the Pyongyang housing project. The complaints snowballed, and with public discontent mounting amid circulating rumors, the city’s party committee — worried that the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea would hear the talk as well — immediately ordered the justice department of the city people’s committee to launch an inspection.
After several days of investigations, the justice department discovered that some people who were provided homes in the second stage of the Hwasong area had paid officials on the people’s committee in dollars and other valuables to be allotted apartments on the lower floors “because it’s hard to live in upper floors with the lifts often stopping due to electricity blackouts.”
“In the end, the justice department confirmed that due to the backroom deals, people with neither authority nor power were usually allotted places on the upper floors and that people who were not supposed to get homes in the development were allotted places by using bribes,” he said.
The justice department detailed the corruption it discovered to the Pyongyang party committee, stressing the need to bolster transparency in housing allotment.
“The city party committee — viewing the problem as a serious one that could be reported all the way to Kim Jong Un if it wasn’t handled quickly — began trying to resolve the problem one way or another, ordering that no more talk emerges regarding housing occupancy and allotments,” the source said.
“The party committee said the housing in the second stage of the Hwasong development was the result of the third housing construction effort in Pyongyang after the Songsin-Songhwa development and the first stage of the Hwasong development. Officials stressed that Pyongyang city must show full sincerity in wholly delivering the Workers’ Party’s and Supreme Leader’s love and consideration to the people in the newly built Rimhung Street.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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