North Korea's use of its showcase capital city to promote an image of national success and prosperity has cemented Pyongyang's reputation as a Potemkin Village boasting leisure facilities that amount to little more than "playgrounds for cadres." Pyongyang has always been an exclusive city, and the 10 percent of the 25 million population allowed to live there generally enjoy a lifestyle the vast majority of North Koreans can only dream of.
But there are increasing signs that the capital's political elite are not the only ones able to indulge a taste for consumer goods and a spot of rest and recreation. A closely monitored but tolerated grassroots capitalism, born out of a spirit of survivalist self-sufficiency that got many through the catastrophic failure of the state distribution system in the famine years of the mid-to-late 1990s, has given rise to a growing entrepreneurial class with disposable income and free time. It emerged during the leadership of Kim Jong-Il, but has only begun to prosper under his son Kim Jong-Un who took power after his father died in 2011. Its rise can be seen in Pyongyang in the number of mobile phone users, the growing fleets of taxis that ply the capital's wide avenues and the splashes of street fashion among young women.
Since taking over from his father, Kim has pushed through a number of costly "leisure" projects that range in scale and ambition from theme parks to a swanky equestrian centre and ski resort. This in a country where, according to the United Nations, 70 percent of the population remains "food insecure" and cash-starved infrastructure leaves millions vulnerable to floods and drought. For the North Korean leadership, the projects serve the dual purpose of projecting prosperity, while also catering to the elite and satisfying the aspirations of those with new-found disposable income.
More than two million North Koreans have signed up for the 3G network service operated by Egypt's Orascom in partnership with North Korea's Koryolink. More up-market is the dolphinarium completed in Pyongyang in 2012 and fed by a specially constructed seawater pipeline from the port of Nampo. And apart from a brief nod to Kim Jong-Un and a message of congratulation regarding the previous day's 70th birthday for the ruling Workers' Party, it is also largely devoid of the political trappings that cling to so many aspects of North Korean public life. But it is an entirely political project, originally devised by Kim Jong-Il and eventually realised by his son, with trainers selected from top universities and sent to China to learn how to handle the dolphins. And the obviously high construction and running expenses again raise the issue of skewed priorities in a country where poverty runs so high.
