It is the cold winter months in North Korea, so how do all those millions of North Koreans living in poverty keep warm?:
You have to love this evil Yankee Imperialist snowman the North Korean kids are playing with in the snow..
South Korea may have just started to prepare for winter, but the North – sometimes referred to as the “frozen land” – is already a few months in.
Winds from Siberia can mean that temperatures can dip to -13C (8.5F) in the capital Pyongyang, which sees an average of 37 snowfall days a year.
North Koreans start gearing up for the winter months in early autumn, and a lack of sufficient heating facilities means the process keeps them busy, say defectors.
Outside of the centrally heated apartment complexes in Pyongyang, people must find, and stock, their own firewood and coal for the winter. But most of the mountains are bare, devoid of firewood, and recent tree-planting projects mean there are restrictions on cutting wood.
Coal is produced in the North but is exported to bring in foreign currency, hiking up domestic market prices: as the weather gets colder, prices climb. Defectors say that even if people are able to burn coal in their homes, poor ventilation can lead to fatalities.
The common testimony is that the state has failed to issue any counter-measures against cold weather, even when cold waves are expected, the authorities fail to issue orders informing and helping people to prepare.
Kim Yeong-mi , 47, who defected to South Korea in 2012, told Daily NK how people prepare:
What is the most important part of the winter preparations?
Without a doubt it’s getting enough fuel to burn. In the northern regions, people prepare firewood, and in the central areas, it’s more coal-focused. Even further south, I’ve heard some use straws from rice. I lived in the central regions, where there used to be rationed coal. Now there’s no such thing, you have to buy it. After August the market prices of coal start to creep up.
How do people heat their apartments?
Apartments in the countryside usually have fireplaces to burn coal. In Pyongyang they use hot water from thermoelectric power plants to heat apartments – using the traditional Korean floor heating system, ondol.
If power plants grind to a halt, you can’t get hot water. But if you don’t use the pipes they can freeze and burst, so people have no choice but to use cold water – which exacerbates the cold. [The Guardian]
You can read the rest at the link, but it sounds like North Korea is basically living like South Koreans did up to the 1970’s.
