North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has had two skyscrapers built to resemble his “most powerful” rockets, footage has revealed. State-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun celebrated the latest two buildings, describing them as echoing the “pride of the country”.
And it referred to the Hwasong missiles, which is North Korea’s largest artillery piece claimed to be nuclear-capable and with a range that encapsulates the entirety of the US. The dictator’s regime said the two skyscrapers will be “for the people”, though experts have questioned the legitimacy of these claims.
The two, phallic-shaped buildings are located in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and were unveiled last week.
State-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun described the skyscrapers as rising “side by side toward the sky”.
They wrote: “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.”
It also compared the “height reached by the Hwasong cannons flying towards the universe” to the “grand and splendid scenery of the streets of Pyongyang”.
Inside one of the towers, which was filmed by the regime, there is a supermarket purportedly replete with food.
Elsewhere, the apartments offer views across the capital city, from the Hwasong district.
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 missile campaign is part of the regime’s latest efforts to show strength against the surrounding allied forces in the US-backed South Korea and beyond.
The regime claims the skyscrapers were built “for the people” but experts have suggested that they will only benefit the “most politically connected and the wealthiest of North Korea’s elite”.
Markus Bell, a research fellow at La Trobe University in Australia, said: “Lopsided development has unequally benefitted 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.
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“Economically and materially, the construction of showcase buildings such as these does little to nothing to help regular North Koreans.”
He added: ‘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 Kim’s are Korea and Korea is the Kims.”
Earlier this week, Kim launched one of the powerful Hwasong-18 rockets from what appeared to be his private golf course.
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