On September 9, North Korea celebrated the 70th anniversary of its founding in its usual manner: with a vast military parade. But ballistic missiles––a mainstay of the autocratic nation’s famously theatrical displays of might––were conspicuously absent. In their stead, uniformed construction workers marched and torchlight parades spelled slogans like “economic construction.”[...]
Since assuming control over North Korea following his father’s death in 2011, Kim Jong-un has personally inaugurated one new apartment building each year, gaining the nickname “builder-president” in the process. This construction preoccupation is hardly new: Partly as a mechanism of social control, Kim Il-sung built cultural centers in small towns across the country, and Kim Jong-Il went on a monument-building spree during the country’s dark “special period.”[...]
It may be slight stylistic improvement over the nation’s previous obsession with Stalinist and Brutalist styles, which alternated from oppressively gaudy to oppressively spartan, but construction quality in North Korea remains suspect. Like earlier projects such as the infamous 3,000-room, never-opened Ryugyong Hotel, many of the new developments likely sit empty, serving as Potemkin show projects. But visitors have reported that even in occupied buildings, interiors are often shabby, with poor access to basic amenities like hot water. In 2014, a brand-new 23-story tower collapsed, reportedly leading to the execution of Choe Yong-gon, then deputy minister of construction and building materials.
