at that April 2012 celebration was a way of creating intimacy and conveying his confident promise that North Koreans would no longer have to tighten their belts, a striking contrast to the “two meals a day” famine years. He announced his byungjin (parallel development) policy the following year: that North Korea can have both nuclear weapons and prosperity. Animated by the optimism of one whose privilege makes him believe anything is possible, he has prioritized both of these issues and personally taken ownership of them—all part of creating and nurturing his brand.
If the architecture of the military component of byungjin is displayed in Korean War museums and military-inspired statues and memorials, the structures devoted to the other half of byungjin are represented by the monuments to leisure. Kim has built ski resorts, a riding club, skating and amusement parks, a new airport, and a dolphinarium, perhaps because he considers these to be markers of a modern state. Or in his naïveté he may simply want his people to enjoy the things to which he has had privileged access. (The sushi chef Fujimoto claimed that Kim once said, “We are here, playing basketball, riding horses, riding Jet Skis, having fun together. But what [about] the lives of the average people?”) Though his father had begun the trend shortly before he died, it was under Kim Jong Un that North Korea undertook a massive building boom and promoted tourism—let’s create a “socialist fairyland,” the regime proclaimed—even as it was volleying threats and missiles, apparently oblivious or indifferent to the incongruity of it all.
The colorful frivolity of the water parks and roller coasters provides a stark contrast to the imposing landscape of war memorials, breathtaking in their size and smothering the country with the weight of North Korea’s real and imagined martial history. North Koreans, young and old, can be seen gleefully frolicking in the massive pools of the Rungra People’s Pleasure Ground. Women wearing stylish but modest swimsuits clutch at each other joyfully as they meet the machine-made waves; in the background is a labyrinth of candy-colored water slides. Boys playfully aim giant water guns at one another. Kim waves as he walks with his entourage on one of his visits, and a big group of people wearing swim trunks and swim caps cheers and waves back. At the Mirim Riding Club, opened in October 2013, visitors can “ride the horses, view equestrian shows, and relax at the beer and snacks stand,” according to one of the Western-based tour companies that operate in North Korea. There are 120 horses to rent—for $8 outdoors or $10 indoors—including the prestigious Orlov Trotters that Russian president Vladimir Putin gifted to North Korea. Another tour company touted that the riding club also features “a pavilion, restaurants, sauna and more!” If horse riding or water slides are not to one’s taste, pleasure seekers can go to a high-tech shooting range, play miniature golf, watch a movie in a 4-D cinema, or see dolphins do tricks. The Masikryong ski resort has nine slopes and a nine-floor chalet with a swimming pool, sauna, and spa, and its shop sells European goods like cheese and chocolate, according to the journalist Kim Wall, who visited there in 2014.
One of the new regime’s strangest early moments was in the summer of 2012 when state media released a photograph of Kim Jong Un and some foreign diplomats riding a roller coaster in the new Rungra People’s Pleasure Ground at its official opening on July 26. Kim is buckled in, grinning widely as his legs dangle in the air against the pale blue sky. Senior North Korean officials are also on the ride, some enjoying it, others looking terrified. The impossible juxtaposition of the leader of the world’s most closed society, the nuclear-armed serial violator of human rights, on a roller coaster enjoying himself with boyish abandon was jarring and grotesque.
The epicenter of this socialist fairyland is Pyongyang, the locus of power where the elite live, work, and play, and where we now see a glimpse of an emerging material and consumer culture. The fevered construction boom under Kim’s rule has created what foreign diplomats there call “Pyonghattan.” The Changjon Street Apartments, for example, consist of an eighteen-tower complex, some up to forty-seven stories tall, creating a skyline that one would expect to see in New York City or Seoul. Indeed, visitors to North Korea over the years have returned with reports of new construction, streets crowded with imported cars and taxis,