North Koreans like to build houses, and often tens of thousands of units start construction together.
A few days ago, the Pyongyang and Sung areas held a groundbreaking ceremony for 10,000 residential construction projects. These houses were built uniformly by the state and then distributed to the citizens free of charge.
Regarding the North Koreans building houses and dividing houses, the most impressive thing is to go to Pyongyang in 2019, and the local tour guide is most ostentatious to the welfare housing system. It is understood that the DPRK has formulated a more detailed housing division system, and what level and identity correspond to different areas of housing.
Under normal circumstances, once young men and women are ready to get married, they can apply for a house by the specific management department of the male unit, and the area of the house is not large at this time, which is about seventy or eighty square meters.
However, the house in North Korea is calculated according to the living area, and there is no public pool, so this small house of 70 or 80 square meters is enough for two small families to live. After that, with the birth of the child and the promotion of the position, you can continue to apply for the transfer of a large area of housing.
These houses are not completely free, and after they are sent to you, you need to pay the utility bills, and you have to pay for the heating in winter. These homes will also be issued with beautiful books, but only residence permits, you do not own and cannot be sold.
But there are exceptions to everything. At that time, we were visiting the Future Scientist Community on the Taedong River in Pyongyang. One of the best in North Korea, Pyongyang's first landmark high-rise building, 210 meters high, 53 floors, with more than 500 high-end residences.
The tour guide also quietly told us that in order to show respect for knowledge, the houses were preferentially assigned to the teachers of Gyeongce University of Technology in Pyongyang. However, there are also some teachers who are assigned good houses, and their family conditions are slightly worse, and they secretly "sell" good houses to rich people who do business. Of course, this "selling" cannot be done publicly, privately. And only the right to use is sold.
Walking the streets of Pyongyang, you will also find an interesting thing: in the central area of Pyongyang, there are many old houses.
At that time, the tour guide explained that although Pyongyang had been trying to build houses, it was too populous to accommodate everyone to live in elevator houses. Therefore, the old was not demolished and the new was built. The old houses built first are generally in the city center, in good locations, and some elderly people who have retired from state-run units are reluctant to leave.
In order to ensure a good image, the walls of these old houses along the street have been painted with beautiful paint. Potted flowers are also placed on the windowsill.
We also found that these residential buildings along the street, even on the first and second floors, did not have anti-theft windows installed, and there were no clothes or bedding on the balconies.
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