I wanted to write an essay about North Korean architecture. There are places online with specialist architectural information about architecture in the DPRK. I wanted this to be more my personal observation (at a distance) of some elements of architecture in this strange and forbidding land.
Pyongyang
A lot of resources deal with Pyongyang so I am not really going to touch on it.
Kaesong
In the South of North Korea not far from the DMZ is the city of Kaesong. Kaesong was one of the few cities where parts of the city survived the bombings of the Korean war and it shows signs of what life was like prior to the 1950s. In fact Kaesong contains at least 1 UNESCO world heritage site. It has famous temples and palace complexes where ginkgo trees sway gently in the breeze, hardly the militaristic image of the DPRK we are usually presented with.
Hamhung
The city of Hamhung was totally rebuilt following the hostilities of the Korean war. A crack team of East German planners were dispatched to completely re-design the city along Bauhaus lines. Construction began in the early 60s and continued until the 1980s.
Although Bauhaus as a movement was supressed in the 1970s like all other ideologies as Kim Jong Il centralised power. The traits of Bauhaus can be seen in the broad avenues, triumphant squares and modernist looking buildings. The crowning glory of which is the concert hall.
Hill top Buddhist temples
Weirdly although Buddhism is officially suppressed in North Korea the regime has preserved a number of monasteries and hill top temples, bizarelly emptied of their buddhist artefacts. Its sobering to contemplate that the monks may have ended up in one of the many gulags. A sobering fate.
Recently there was a joint Pan-Korea pavillion at the Venice Biennale. North Korean architects were asked to come up with designs for the future.
Great article. Many thanks!