opinion

In recent years, modern houses have literally mushroomed in different parts of the capital city of Pyongyang and other regions.

It is the determination of the Workers' Party of Korea to make the DPRK the first country in the world to solve the housing problem in the coming 20 to 30 years.

Pyongyang skyline changes every year

The Eighth Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea held in January 2021 set the goal of building 10 000 flats in Pyongyang every year during the five-year plan for national economic development, 50 000 in all, and solving the housing problem in the capital city in the main.

In 2022, modern Songhwa Street was built in the east of Pyongyang with an 80-storey apartment house as its icon to break the eastern skyline of the capital city. In 2023, Hwasong Street rose and in 2024, Rimhung and Jonwi streets sprang up in the northern direction, presenting another distinctive view of its skyline in architectural beauty.

The sound of blasting for groundbreaking of a new street booms in the beginning of every year and fireworks are displayed on the spectacular skyline, blessing the citizens who received new houses in the spring of the following year. For the citizens of Pyongyang it has become a regular event full of joy and excitement.

In April 2022, a terraced houses district was erected in another new and distinctive style in the architecture of dwelling houses on the Pothong riverside in Pyongyang.

Originally, it was where the official residence of Kim Il Sung, the founder of socialist Korea and eternal President of the DPRK, stood. The respected General Secretary Kim Jong Un planned to build the finest apartment houses for the working people in the meaningful place, and accordingly terraced apartment houses, each flat of which covers 200 square metres, were built on the banks of the river in a year.

The Pyongyang skyline changes every year with the homes of happiness of the working people increasing. It is quite different from the realities in other countries where office buildings of big businesses boasting of their dignity and commercial service buildings bragging about luxury and extravagance dominate the city skylines.

Countryside horizon becomes more beautiful 

The WPK set the construction of modern farmhouses as a primary task in eliminating the gap between the urban and rural communities and building rich and cultured rural communities.

The construction of farmhouses has been pushed forward on a nationwide scale, with the result that tens of thousands of modern farmhouses are built every year.

Priority is given to the remotest mountainous farms and the most backward farms, and the news about farmers' moving into new houses is reported or broadcast one after another by newspapers and on TV.

As families and relatives live at one farm or village in group, it is very commonplace that one family receives two to three new houses. A family in Munam-ri, Pujon County, South Hamgyong Province, a remote mountain village, was provided with as many as 12 houses at a time.

The number of completed houses has grown every year over the past three years since the construction of farmhouses began. Last year more than 47 000 families moved into new houses across the country.

The countryside horizon becomes more beautiful day by day, narrowing the gap between urban and rural civilization.

Houses built at state's expense, provided for free 

Everyone, who received new houses in Pyongyang or the provinces, does not know the house prices. And they do not know the words advance payment, monthly instalment or mortgage loan for the purchase of house either. They were all provided with new houses gratis.

It is the eternal policy of the DPRK guaranteed by law that the state builds new houses and provides people with them for free.

Announcing the start of the large-scale housing construction plan, the respected General Secretary said it is not for any economic profit, but a noble undertaking to make the wealth of the state and the results of creative labour of the working masses the actual benefit for them.

Therefore, the DPRK people feel the benefits of the state from the bottom of their hearts and regard it as the bounden duty and genuine life of themselves and their children to devote their all to the development of the country.

The second session of the UN general meeting of human settlement programme held in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, in June 2023 adopted a resolution on the "provision of houses for all" with regard to the issue of house prices, and the member states agreed on considering housing to be a human rights issue.

The people who live in their homes are stable and the more there are such people, the stronger and steadier the country is. In other words, the DPRK is the stablest and has a powerful capacity for development.