Such fashionable apartment complexes originate primarily from the housing policy of the North. Citizens in the North cannot own houses, in principle. They are merely allotted the right to live in flats. Apartment occupants in fact cannot interfere with the shape and interior designs of apartments, nor can they choose them. This is why apartments in the North play a secondary role as living space, while their functions as structures decorating a city or streets are highlighted. Looked at from the perspective of planning and administering the external appearance of a city, apartments become buildings effectively taking part in the beauty of the city.

As a result, the building of apartment complexes in Pyongyang followed the development of streets. Pyongyang streets began to be developed under five-year plans in about 1957 when the socialist city-planning concept was introduced. The Cheongnyeon (Youth) and Botongmun Streets were developed in the late 1950s, the Arch of Triumph Street in the early 1960s, the Moranbong Street in the mid-1960s, and the Chollima and Sosong Streets in the 1970s. Developed thereafter were the Nakwon (Paradise) Street in the mid-1970s, the Changgwang and Munsu Streets in the early 1980s, the Kyonghung Street and the second phase of the Changgwang Street in the mid-1980s, the Kwangbok (Liberation) and Cheongchun (Youth) Streets in the late 1980s, and the Tongil (Unification) Street in the 1990s. Apartment complexes of uneven height and fabulous shapes were then built on both sides of those wide streets.

The building of 15-story apartments along the Chollima Street early in the 1970s, it is said, put the pressure on South Korean housing authorities, who then were yet to begin apartment construction in earnest. "Both North and South Korea have placed emphasis on apartment construction," says Dr. Chang Song-su at the Korea Housing Industry Research Institute. "Prompting it, in addition to the need of resolving the housing shortages, were apartments' military uses and competition in inter-Korean systems." Apartments have advantages in street-to-street fighting; they can serve as pillboxes and firing and shelling positions. They also have a lower probability of being completely destroyed.

The construction of high-rise apartments started with that of 30-story apartments along the Changgwang Street in the 1980s, for which Russian-style houses were destroyed and to which was given an additional meaning involving the "anti-revolutionary faction struggle." Forty-two-story apartments were built along the Kwangbok (Liberation) Street timed with the Pyongyang Festival. The fatal demerit of no elevators, however, resulted in a source of serious pain to dwellers of high-story apartments. A sense of rivalry between the two Koreas seeking to build higher and higher apartments reflects a dark aspect of their competition in social systems.

The construction of large quantities of apartment complexes in a short period of time is ascribable to the prefabrication building formula. The method, developed in cold countries like the now-defunct Soviet Union, has the merit of saving time needed for cement curing. It was also compatible with concentrated work by construction amateurs during the off-farming season or at night.

"While apartment construction has trod a natural course in the South thanks to the preference of flats by the middle class, it's hard to say that apartments have settled down as a successful mode of housing units in the North as the inside space has been designed inefficiently in consideration of their outward appearance and as they are accompanied by various inconveniences," comments Dr. Chang Song-su. The only merit of apartments in the North is that they are "beautiful to look at from afar." It is unfortunate, though, that even this merit verifies the contradiction of the North Korean capital city as a "showcase."

(Kim Mi-young, miyoung@chosun.com )