North Korea’s showpiece capital struggles with basic winter heating

As modern apartment dwellers in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang struggle to heat their homes in the winter, some apparently miss the old-fashioned stoves of the countryside. Chronic energy shortages in North Korea’s showcase capital have rendered central heating systems largely ineffective, leaving residents of Pyongyang’s high-rise apartment buildings to improvise in the cold — a sign, observers say, that the regime’s showy construction projects often fail to meet people’s basic needs.

“These apartments may look modern on the outside, but the reality is that irregular heating means residents often find themselves shivering in their homes. So people living in coveted Pyongyang apartments often find themselves envying country people living in houses heated by stoves,” a source in Pyongyang told Daily NK recently, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

According to the source, residents of high-rise apartments in the Mangyongdae district of Pyongyang are exposed to bitter winter temperatures because of unreliable heating. These apartments usually have five or six hours of heating every day, but heating is sometimes cut off completely when energy is redirected during major political events.

Pyongyang apartments generally depend on central heating systems that utilize waste heat from coal plants. But this method is inefficient because of severe energy loss from aging equipment at the plants, including old heating conduits.

That has led North Koreans to use space heaters, electric blankets and gas boilers, but none of these are reliable alternatives given the chronic shortage of power and gas. Some people compensate by installing solar panels on their veranda, but wealthy families are generally the only ones who can handle the high installation fees.

Workarounds blocked, options narrow

Another common workaround is to retrofit the floor heating system — known as ondol — to work with coal briquettes. This heating approach is also the reason for the stovepipes often protruding from veranda windows. But the authorities have been cracking down on stovepipe installation and the resulting fumes for reasons of urban beautification, the source said, with the result that briquette heating is no longer a viable option.

Under power saving guidelines, the use of space heaters is prohibited even in newly built apartments on Songshin, Songhwa, Rimhung and Jonwi avenues, where the power supply is said to be more regular. That suggests that the heating issue remains unresolved in both older and newer apartments.

That has forced apartment residents to turn to old-fashioned methods of enduring the winter, such as draping verandas and windows with insulating materials, staying inside indoor tents or carrying around hot-water bottles to conserve body heat.

Given these inconveniences, people gripe that apartment life is not much of an improvement, despite the fancy exteriors, the source said.

Considering that Pyongyang has the finest amenities in North Korea, it may sound strange that capital residents struggling to keep their homes warm would long for the old-timey stoves of the countryside. That can be seen as a dramatic example of how the regime’s showy construction projects often fail to meet residents’ basic living requirements.

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