North Korean Culture - Architecture and City Planning

Architecture and City Planning

Arguably the most distinct and impressive form of contemporary cultural expression in North Korea is architecture and city planning. P'yongyang, almost completely destroyed by the United States during the Korean War, has been rebuilt on a grand scale. Many new buildings have been constructed during the 1980s and 1990s in order to enhance P'yongyang's status as a capital.

Major structures are divided architecturally into three categories: monuments, buildings that combine traditional Korean architectural motifs and modern construction, and high-rise buildings of a modern design. Examples of the first include the Ch'ollima Statue; a twenty-meter high bronze statue of Kim Il-sung in front of the Museum of the Korean Revolution (itself, at 240,000 square meters, one of the largest structures in the world); the Arch of Triumph (similar to its Parisian counterpart, although a full ten meters higher); and Chuch'e Tower, 170 meters high, built on the occasion of Kim's seventieth birthday in 1982.

The second architectural category makes special use of traditional tiled roof designs and includes the People's Culture Palace and the Grand People's Study House, both in P'yongyang, and the International Friendship Exhibition Hall at Myohyang-san. The latter building displays gifts given to Kim Il-sung by foreign dignitaries. In light of North Korea's current close relationship to China, and during the Choson Dynasty, it is significant that the section of the hall devoted to gifts from China is the largest.

The third architectural category includes high-rise apartment complexes and hotels in the capital. The most striking of these buildings is the Ryugyong Hotel, unfinished as of now (with construction halted from 1992 - April 2008). Described as the world's tallest hotel at 105 stories, its triangular shape looms over north-central P'yongyang. The Koryo Hotel is an ultramodern, twin-towered structure forty-five stories high.

Much construction occurred before celebrations of Kim Il-sung's eightieth birthday, including the building of grand apartment complexes and the Reunification Expressway, a four-lane road connecting the capital and the Demilitarized Zone. According to a journalist writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, the highway is "an impressive piece of engineering" that "cuts a straight path through mountainous terrain with 21 tunnels and 23 bridges on the 168 kilometers route to P'anmunjm." As in many other construction projects, the military provided the labor. North Korea has stated its hope that upon eventual reunification the highway will carry back-and-forth traffic.