Town and country planning
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Town and country planning in North Korea
North Korea is short of energy (they want to be self-sufficient and refuse most of the foreign help), which can be seen easily. In the capital (Pyongyang) the power supply is reasonable. Here, most building are provided with electricity.
 Pyongyang by night |
 Pyongyang by night |
Transport
Outside the capital it is very dark. The same holds for the trafic (which of course is cause by the oil shortage): in Pyongyang you see some cars, but outside the capital you hardly see any. There are busses, trolleybusses and trams, but these are also mainly concentrated in Pyongyang. For people in the countryside it is (almost) impossible to more around. They are restricted to bicycles, ox-carts and they go by foot.
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The subway of Pyongyang is a network of two lines which form an important part in the public transport of the North Korean capital. The construction of the subway started in 1968. Prisoners were used for helping the constructors. Originally, the metro was scheduled every fewe minutes. A lot of vagueness exist around the exploitation of the subway. Some source report that the majority of the system is not operating most of the day because of energy shortage. A lot of speculation takes place on the subway system. According to several sources the metro only operation among two or three stations. We are sure that at least four stations are operational. Our guides told us that all stations are operational but this is doubtful when taking the energy supplies into account. We also heard so other stories on the subway stations: they seem to be used as shelters, they are only used by the gouvernement and they are used for storing nuclear weapons. Whatever the truth is, something is going on here. When we returned to China, all cameras were taken as soon as they saw a picture on the subway system on it... the cameras were returned and the pictures were still on it... but still, a weird situation...
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Buildings
In North Korea you can distribute the building over three groups: the building for habitation, the buildings for the great leader and buildings for tourists. The first group is old, badly maintained and "looks terrible". The second group is perfect, beuatiful gardens, colossal and very well protected. The touristic buildings like hotels are immense as wel (although there is hardly any tourist) and very expensive. For example, we and about 40 other tourists were in a hotel built out of marble, having 1001 (!) rooms. By the way, the hotel is on an island in Pyongyang, so that we could not "escape".
 Appartments |
 Small shed |
 Building where the Party meets |
 Plaza where the military parades take place |
 Our hotel, the high building in the back of the picture |
 Appartments, built in 1995 (!) |