| Title |
The Site Planning of Gwangbok New Town in Pyongyang |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5659/JAIK_PD.2019.35.10.91 |
| Keywords |
Gwangbok New Town; Street Formation; Kim Jong-Il |
| Abstract |
Gwangbok is the best example of the dramatic changes after the 1970s in residential and urban planning as political power shifted from Kim
Il-sung to his son. Kim Jong-il. Therefore, despite the limited available data on North Korea, we first attempted to accurately describe the
design process used to develop Gwangbok. This study investigated the following aspects of North Korean urban planning by examining
Gwangbok. First, we clarified Kim Jong-il’s aesthetics, which had a key role in the Gwangbok design. We particularly analysed the ideas
expressed in his literary writings. Second, we identified the major ideas of the North Korean architects and urban planners who implemented
Kim Jong-il’s interventions. Last, we reviewed the Soviet Union’s influence on the discourse about North Korean residential and urban
planning during the post-Khrushchev era. This analysis improves our understanding of the trends during the 1970s and 1980s in socialist
residential construction, which was a relatively flexible and open prefabrication approach. |