What real apartments of ordinary people in North Korea look like (19 photos)

This is, of course, one of those topics that still remains practically closed behind seven seals. How exactly do people live in this country? In what living conditions? What can they afford? What do they have at home that they don’t even dream of?





You won’t find practically anything on this topic on the Internet, there won’t be thousands of photos and hundreds of videos from people’s houses and apartments. After all, they don’t take tourists to visit locals and don’t let them in on their own, the locals themselves will never invite you to visit, risking a life sentence for contacts with foreigners, and there are no social networks in the country so that videos and photos themselves become publicly available thanks to stories, Wechats and TikToks .

So it turns out that in the information space there is practically a vacuum about everything that concerns the ordinary life of ordinary people in the most closed country in the world.



And you see only balconies and cloudy glass windows of numerous high-rise buildings in Pyongyang or old, sometimes rickety, panel “Khrushchev” buildings in the provinces.

And there, on the other side, is the real life of people, which is not shown and cannot be penetrated.

Who and under what circumstances took the photos of the apartments that you will see below is a complex question. But these photographs would hardly have passed censorship and they certainly could not have been published on North Korean websites, where everything is posted only after the approval of special authorities.





This is what the entrance to a three-story residential building in the town of Kaesong looks like. This is the entrance to both the watchman’s closet and his window, just like in our old houses.

And this is the hallway already in the apartment.



Then you find yourself in the living room.

In the outback, people still have old CRT TVs from the distant 90s. Not everyone has more modern flat ones.

Very near the TV you can see the uninterruptible power supply, because... Power surges occur every day and because of them, equipment fails.



Please note, this is a different apartment, and there is also a similar block under the TV.



A more modern living room interior, already with a flat-screen TV in the apartment of a resident of the capital Pyongyang.



Another living room.

There is very little furniture in North Korean apartments. But what is always there are portraits of the Great Leader Generalissimo Kim Il Sung and the Great Leader Generalissimo Kim Jong Il. This is how they should be called and written.

Portraits in the home, like a lapel pin with a portrait, are a must for everyone in the country.





There may be no furniture in the room at all, especially if it is a bedroom, but portraits will be required.



Why might there be no furniture in the bedroom?

A bed is a luxury and is expensive. And Asians and other countries are no strangers to sleeping on the floor on mats. What can we say about North Korea...





Another bedroom option. Judging by the photo above the bed, this is a bed for a married couple, although it doesn’t even look like a one-and-a-half bed, but a single one.



A sofa and a refrigerator are signs of wealth in the family.

And it doesn’t matter that there is electricity only a few hours a day, and the refrigerator is not used for its intended purpose.

But guests always see him first.



Most often, the kitchen is the most richly furnished room in the apartment.





The same cannot be said about the bathroom. There is no hot water in ordinary apartments and it doesn’t even exist in provincial towns. Therefore, almost the first thing people do is save money to buy a water heater.

Don’t be surprised by the amount of water in the bathroom: this is how people stock up on water for domestic needs, because when the electricity goes out, there is no water supply in their homes.

In the 90s, my parents did the same thing during the peak of the energy crisis.



In most apartments, the toilets are almost no different from the toilets in public toilets somewhere at the station.

In fact, it's just a hole in the floor. Only earthenware and connected in a pipe.



This is how ordinary people live: with a minimum of furniture, no radiators in their apartments (they didn’t notice that none of the photographs had them), no beds, but with portraits of the Great Leaders...