Looking North.

• Author: Meuser, Philipp
• Position: Worldview - North Korea - Essay - City overview

RELIABLE information from within the isolated zone to the north of the 38th parallel is a rare commodity, and unanswered questions and life speculation are the order of the day when reporting about North Korea. Earth tremors in East Asia regularly registered by seismographic monitoring stations point to the missile testing activities of the country with the largest army in the world. The few lucky tourists and visitors who succeed in receiving permission to enter the small country that borders on China, Russia, and South Korea vie with each other in relating absurd experiences. Inevitably, then, this article is heavy on surmises and interpretations; there simply is no way to perform investigative research in North Korea, much less capture everyday situations. No other country isolates itself more completely from the rest of the world than this last bastion of the Cold War.

Nevertheless, there is more to Pyongyang than a Gaulish village indomitably resisting globalization and following a special set of rules for communal life that was drawn up by its political leaders. Setting aside the glaring issues of human rights and social serf-determination, Pyongyang arguably is the world's best preserved open-air museum of socialist architecture. It is dominated by standardized mass housing developments, broad thoroughfares, ambitiously designed community buildings, and monumental public buildings--not a billboard or garishly decorated kiosk anywhere in sight. The only splashes of color are the ubiquitous propaganda posters. Devoid of private individual traffic, the streets are deserted expanses of asphalt The monotonous succession of mass housing developments is punctuated al regular intervals by large sculptures and monuments showing the former president, Kim Il-sung, with his wife and son. The total obscuring of the individual defines the rhythm of the city, which is driven by the state propaganda slogans on display at intersections and carefully designed road forks.

With an estimated 3,000,000 residents, the capital city of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a cabinet of architectural curiosities that defies comparison--except, perhaps, with the urban design ideas of the early USSR constructivists. It is a test-tube city in which all life, from the moment of its conception, is under strict surveillance in neatly compartmentalized functional units. Pyongyang is the image of a utopian ideology, the materialization of a sociological experiment that remains preserved to this day as the relic of a bygone era. To a first-time visitor, the capital gives the impression of being a modern city dominated by wide streets and vast squares. The main streets are lined by multi-story residential developments with facades decorated in gray and pastel. On sunny days, the buildings look almost colorful.

At second glance, too, Pyongyang looks like a city of the modern age, even if its modern age is a socialist one. Its general layout is easy to read, defined by the Taedong River. The city center historically was in western Pyongyang, while eastern Pyongyang, the site of the old airport, today is dominated by residential areas and the heavily guarded diplomatic compound. South of the river, the gargantuan residential developments along Thongil Street look like the brick-and-mortar realization of the megalomaniac urban design fantasies of Ludwig Hilberseimer or Le Corbusier: a lovely sight on the drawing board that is anything but friendly and livable in reality, but it would be too glib to conclude that this simply is a reflection of the political system of North Korea; after all, even a state under totalitarian rule must provide for the basic needs of its people.

A Western-style critical approach to urban development and to the architecture of Pyongyang raises a number of questions, many of which contain the seeds of their own answers. Why are the streets lined by seemingly well-kept residential buildings that conceal primitive, single-story huts in their backyards? Why are public buildings and monuments illuminated by perfectly designed lighting systems after dark while private dwellings show barely a light? Why do public buildings flaunt lavish facades of quarried stone while the pre-cast concrete of the pavements is riddled with cracks? The imposed collectivism, the permanent state of economic emergency, and the focus on social mega-events and prestigious buildings in which to hold them determine the order of priorities according to which the buildings--which all were, without exception, built by the state--are operated and maintained.

This phenomenon is symptomatic of social systems in which property ownership is not an issue. Pyongyang presents a particularly impressive case study of this extreme form of nationalized real estate policy. Its urban ensembles, skylines, and intersections attain a degree of perfection that in a democratic system would be almost frightening. If one disregards for a moment such criteria as construction quality, choice of materials, and the aesthetic pleasure to be derived from contemporary and modern architecture, one would have to give the urban designers of Pyongyang full marks for their efforts. The ease of navigation in the city, the clear iconography of its public buildings, and the carefully thought-out proportions of the intersections and vistas that open out into spacious squares--all of these parameters can be found in any urban planning textbook, and yet their rigorous application proves to be a source of irritation for our European gaze.

It comes as no surprise that the land law of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea completely is at odds with Western ideas about property ownership. Passed in...