Construction in North Korea

First, let’s look across the Yalu River to see how construction is done in Dandong right at the waterfront. You’ll see clean concrete, construction lifts and bamboo grids with green nets.

Let’s now go back to North Korea and see how construction is done here:

First, the material to build with has to be taken from riverbeds or quarries.

The stones are then sorted and classed by size.

In the next step, they’re broken to smaller fragments. A drum-like machine is depicted in the above photo on the left. The stones are put in there with giant bowling size iron balls to crush the material. The crushed stones are then used to heavily stretch cement to form rudimentary bricks.

Those bricks are used to build most of the structure…

…while real concrete and steel are used to build the necessary skeleton. Lack of proper tools and knowledge reveals a nasty finish.

Here’s an example of construction at the Ryugyong Hotel. You’ll see in the lower right corner the mounting brackets for the glass facade.

After the building is roughly finished, the rough spots are being covered with plaster, to paint it later on.

Click on the photo to enlarge. Some rudimentary construction outside Sinujiu. Instead of carts to transport material, they use two-man wooden stretcher like thing with one open end on one side to quickly poor stuff on the next pile.

Click on the photo to enlarge. Building a concrete road right outside Sinujiu.

take nr. 2: some more pictures.

drying corn (yellow stuff) and peppers (red stuff)

workers doing something with the corn

construction

market somewhere on the way to Dandong

washing clothes in the river, in a fairly big town -> no water tab?

more little private stands, scattered all over

Dandong (China), seen from North Korea

Sinujiu, with a poster of the “100 Day Campaign” to make the extra effort, followed immediatly by another 150 Day Campaign to inspire another great effort. NK isn’t doing well.

By the way, here’s a light smog map of north korea I found in google, or what China let me find through Google. The map is inverted. You’ll see Beijing and Seoul clearly.

Dandong -> Pyongyang: no comments

Sinujiu

harvest

mixing cement for a new road

more harvest

beautiful north Korean landscape – North Korea’s Landscapes are despite that bad things happening in them, awesomely beautiful. Can’t wait of NK to open.

Diversity of Dandong – no comment.

breaking radio silence: Dandong and back.

I haven’t been updating my blog for a few days now. There was simply no time. Among other things, I travelled back to Dandong for a night and got bombarded again with just too many impressions. I could capture some on pictures, but most of them I just had take in. So here are some of the thoughts, that came to me:
I like traditional Korean houses much more than Chinese Houses. They are not build with predominant “kitsch”, but sleeker and simpler.

People are being ordered to do anything and everything. Today, they’re road workers, tomorrow, they’ll be farmers and yesterday, they were roof workers. And if there isn’t anything to do, they collect the little they can grow, prepare it, carry it somewhere and sell it to passers by. Mostly old people. Either cigarettes or snacks. And I saw it all over: In Pyongyang or on my way to Dandong.

Arriving in Dandong, I enjoyed this 700000 people city, bustling with life, took a room in a hotel, got a great view of the mountain range. All those lights, freedom of movement, capitalism, more lights and that typical background noise of a big city.

Just thankful to be back again.

the sound of korea

As I learned today, ancient Korea originated somewhere in what is today Manchuria, subsequently China. So in that aspect, I’m just gonna count Dandong as part of Korea…

the sound of Korea.

Starting with Dandong in China, landing in an airport, built in pure socialist china. It was quite a shock stepping out of our plane onto the tarmac. What we left was the grand airport from Beijing, Terminal 3, built for the olympics and one of the prides from China today and we get to see this old crummy but awesome airport. We walked from the Air China B737-300 right to the baggage claim… which was made fully out of tiles, a conveyor belt sunken into the floor and in the middle of it were lots of pots with plants of any kind. From there it was right out into the street. That was it.

Dandong is loud… people talking everywhere, honking all over and people on the promenade making music, trying to escape the advertising loudspeakers in central Dandong.

There wasn’t really a difference between night and day. On the shores of Yalu River, you could see right over to North Korea, imagining an international timezone border. It was pitch-dark on the other side with a 300000 soul city being there. Just one light was lit, while Dandong was one great example of light-smog. In the hotel room, the same: noise all over. BTW… every night they’d call up my room to ask: “Lady-massage, yes or no?” Lack of trust let me always say “no”. I must have seemed like someone lonely. I think I am, but that’s another story. Somehow the whole room was trimmed for paid pleasures. The minibar had, among other things, condoms, chinese versions of spanish fly and viagra and see-through lingerie for both women and men… sealed of course. Next time in Dandong, i’ll stay in the crown plaza… a bit outside, but so silent, that you’d just relax.

So, the next day, we went in.

North Korea, DPRK, whatever…

First sound, a whistle from some distant train… and silence. After the formalities at the border, we went through Sinujiu and I managed to take one picture of two despite our speed… it was already late and getting too dark to take pictures while in motion. (I took this picture a year ago, while on the same route as well as the next pictures of Pyongyang.)

Over land, there was that typical sound while standing on a deserted acre, with occasionally a truck passing by or the quiet murmuring of people. As it got dark, there was literally no light everywhere. As if the entire country was ordered to keep lights off because of a strategic blackout, with the difference, that there was no electrical infrastructure anyhow. The only lights were from the few oncoming trucks or from some people with blue-whitish shining LED flashlights.

Arriving in Pyongyang wasn’t any different, except for the buildings with single lit rooms. Many of them had energy saving lamps, some had tungsten light bulbs. But the sounds were just… absent. Cicadas (giant mutant-like crickets making a hell of a lot of noise) at most, our engine roaring but when it died down… nothing. In Caracas, I had always some background noise… but here, it’s only crickets.

And early in the morning, about at 7am… Sirens go off, followed by propaganda style chanting through loudspeakers, mounted all over the city…

So those were some sounds from Korea, all the way from the noise in Dandong, to the sounds of the land, the silence of pyongyang and the sound of crickets, my typing and iTunes, with big brother eavesdropping on every sound of korea. 1:45 am.

Notice: Pictures 4,5 and 6 on this blogpost were taken a year ago. I’ll keep the good stuff coming as soon as I set off with my bike alone in Pyongyang. #anxiety

Dandong by Night

Some impressions of Dandong by Night, shot just a few hours ago, submitted to Europe to upload it on youtube.

1 day to go! packing things, organizing stuff & twirling thumbs

ok, passport, tickets, credit cards, cool backpack, tripods, batteries, more batteries, the other batteries too, portable hdd, storage media, mac, chargers, three cameras, navigational thingie, maps (shit, still gotta print them), cosmetics, clothing and something to write on and with. seems simple enough and yet there’s too much to organize… where does all that come from?! i dumped half of my belongings and it’s still too much. aaaaaargh!!! my room’s a mess and i still have to wash clothes, organize mail forwarding… over-friggin- whelmed.

“crazy in pyongyang” went south. about 130 hits or so and no answers. well, i got an answer from someone i haven’t seen since… loooooong ago.

well… other than that, there’s nothing else to do, than to wiggle my toes and twirl my thumbs until i get going.

Picture: taken a year ago from dandong. North Koreans being put on a boat and shown dandong. you can watch, but you can’t touch.