Affairs of status

摘要

'Let us turn the whole country into a socialist fairyland!' urges one of the 310 official patriotic slogans published by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea this year. Let us usher in a great golden age of construction/ declares another, 'by thoroughly applying the Party's idea on architecture!' Despots tend to have a thing for buildings, and North Korea is no exception. Indeed, its stance on the built environment is a good deal more sophisticated than many dictatorships, coming complete with a 170-page treatise, On Architecture, penned by former leader Kim Jong-il himself. The text reads a little like one of Prince Charles' outbursts, a mix of straightforward common sense and unbridled lunacy, written with a keen sense of urgency.