‘Every Fourteen Minutes’ lecture at the Charles B. Wang Center

Dr. Cheehyung Harrison Kim was a guest lecturer at the SUNY Stony Brook Charles Wang Center for a discussion on North Korea postwar boom and drive. The phrase “one apartment every fourteen minutes” captures the extraordinary postwar building boom in Pyongyang, a project that shaped North Korea’s urban identity, state ideology, and collective memory The birth of North Korea after the Korean War—centered on state authority and work culture—is distinctly represented in architecture. Architecture was divided into two interconnected types: monumental structures symbolizing the utopian vision of the state and vernacular structures instrumental to the regime of production. Architecture was also part of North Korea’s urbanization efforts through efficiency, prefabrication, and speed. “One apartment every fourteen minutes” was the motto born on the construction sites of Pyongyang. The memory of this postwar urbanization, which involved an immense level of international cooperation, began to