Penthouses in North Korea - More a nightmare than a dream
For people in many countries, living in a penthouse is the dream. In North Korea? Not so much. In North Korea, the poor live in penthouses rather than the rich.
Leader Kim Jong Un keeps building outwardly glamorous high-rise apartments in Pyongyang, with the latest being an 80-storey skyscraper completed earlier this week. But defectors and other North Koreans say that unreliable elevators and electricity, poor water supply, and concerns about workmanship mean that historically few people have wanted to live near the top of such structures.
"In North Korea, the poor live in penthouses rather than the rich, because the lift often does not work properly, and they cannot pump water up due to low water pressure," said Jung Si-woo, a 31-year-old who defected to neighbouring South Korea in 2017.
In the North, he lived on the third floor of a 13-storey building that lacked an elevator, while a friend who lived on the 28th floor of a 40-storey block had never used the elevator because it was not working, Jung said.
On Thursday (April 14) state media showed Kim inaugurating another housing cluster, this time for members of the elite, including a famous TV news presenter, Ri Chun Hi. They were low-rise buildings, each only a few floors tall.
Lee Sang-Yong, the editor-in-chief of Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that reports on North Korea, said his sources reported that the apartments for regular people were not ready to live in.
Windows had only frames and water taps, though installed, were not working, but the recently completed luxury homes come complete with furniture and utensils. To ensure the new high-rise apartments are popular, North Korea will have to further improve electricity and water supplies, and overcome worries about the quality of construction, he added.
North Korea assigns housing, with buying and selling of homes or apartments technically illegal in the socialist state. But experts say the practise has become common, dabbled in mostly by those who benefited from the spread of private markets under Kim. He has vowed to improve construction quality and build tens of thousands of new apartments.
The power supply improved significantly under Kim, spawning some new nightlife opportunities, but North Korea still grapples with shortages and sometimes shoddy infrastructure.
