Nuke-mad Kim Jong Un has two skyscrapers built that look like his ‘most powerful’ missiles
- Kim Jong-un has had two skyscrapers built to resemble two powerful rockets
- The two towers in Pyongyang were unveiled last week in the Hwasong district
Missile-mad Kim Jong-un has had two new skyscrapers built to resemble his ‘most powerful’ rockets in Pyongyang.
The two towers were revealed last week in the new Hwasong district, which shares its name with North Korea‘s Hwasong missile family.
And it seems the skyscrapers’ resemblance to the rocket is no coincidence, with regime propaganda rag, the Rodong Sinmun, highlighting the similarity in its pages.
It bragged: ‘The two high-rise residential houses rising side by side toward the sky in the Hwasong district seem to resemble Hwasong missiles, the pride of our country, as the name suggests.’
The paper also compared the ‘height reached by the Hwasong cannons flying towards the universe’ with that of the ‘grand and splendid scenery of the streets of Pyongyang’.
Missile-mad Kim Jong-un has had two new skyscrapers built in the new Hwasong district, which shares its name with North Korea’s Hwasong missile family
Kim Jong-un at the unveiling of the two missile-shaped buildings just days after Kim debuted his new Hwasong-18 missile, which Pyongyang calls its ‘most powerful, pivotal and principal means’ of defence
Earlier this week the regime launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile, identified as a Hwasongpho-17 (pictured)
Regime newsreel footage reveals the inside of one tower, showing party cadres in its well-stocked supermarket and taking in the view from a new apartment.
It comes just days after Kim debuted his new Hwasong-18 missile, which Pyongyang calls its ‘most powerful, pivotal and principal means’ of defence.
The regime says the skyscrapers were built ‘for the people’ but with growing numbers of North Koreans teetering on the edge of starvation, experts aren’t so sure.
Markus Bell, a research fellow at La Trobe University in Australia, said: ‘Lopsided development has unequally benefited denizens of Pyongyang.
‘The construction of these flashy “rocket apartments” will benefit the most politically connected and the wealthiest of North Korea’s elite.
‘Ordinary people will not be able to afford to live in these apartments, in much the same way as ordinary people can’t afford to live in Kensington and Chelsea, and Islington.
‘Economically and materially, the construction of showcase buildings such as these does little to nothing to help regular North Koreans.’
People at the unveiling of the two new buildings, as shown by the propaganda state media Pen News
It seems the skyscrapers’ resemblance to the rocket is no coincidence, with regime propaganda rag, the Rodong Sinmun, highlighting the similarity in its pages
Dr Bell, author of Outsiders: Memories of Migration to and from North Korea, said the missile-like design also contributed another reminder of the Kims to the Pyongyang skyline.
He said: ‘The missile program is a legacy project, the young leader having inherited it from his father and his grandfather.
‘The construction of these apartment blocks are symbolic in the ideological feedback loop that tells the country and, to a lesser extent, the world that the Kims are Korea and Korea is the Kims.’
Dr Bell’s book is released on paperback in July, and is available to pre-order from Amazon.