The fluctuating mosaic of socio-spatial inequalities in central Pyongyang under the pressures of marketization

Abstract

North Korea is one of the world's remaining totalitarian states. Nevertheless, marketization, despite officially being banned, rapidly developed and metamorphosed local society following the severe economic crisis of the mid-1990s. This article examines the transformation of central Pyongyang after 2000 through the lens of socio-spatial inequalities using residential housing as a key criterion. Utilizing historical satellite images, we accurately mapped and traced the evolution of housing stock in central Pyongyang over the past two decades. The coexistence of the market and the legacy of the state's welfare system was found to have kept the slums, quasi-slums and a nomenklatura gated community geographically distinct and socially homogeneous. In contrast, in other parts of central Pyongyang, the active pursuit of middle-size and high-rise residential development, taking forms of housing renovations, redevelopments of industrial sites, and infill development, have rapidly expanded and verticalized the residential urban fabric while intensifying a spatial intermixture of different socio-economic groups. In short, marketization was powerful enough to transform the urban landscape and the patterns of socio-spatial inequality in Pyongyang despite the numerous institutional and administrative barriers that have maintained socio-spatial distance between those at the very top and the very bottom.