An entire floor of a food factory in Pyongyang has been made into a staff water park, propaganda proudly boasts
IT’S better known for chain gangs and hard labour, but now North Korea is vying for Google’s claim to the world’s coolest workplace.
The fifth floor of a food factory in Pyongyang’s Mangyongdae district has been made into a staff waterpark, propaganda proudly boasts.
Pictures show the facility complete with swimming pools and basketball hoops, as well as sun loungers, a fish pond, grotto and sauna.
On an island in the pool is a huge trophy – an apparent nod to the factory’s role making food for the country’s athletes.
Nobody is using the amenities in the photographs, with state-run media saying this was down to the time they were taken.
But Kim Jong-un’s state media insists: “Employees here enjoy the culture and emotional life as much as possible in the water playground.”
Pyongyang is already home to the Munsu Water Park, but the cost of entry means that it’s too expensive for ordinary citizens to visit.
And the reality of factory work in the North is vastly different to propaganda, with past figures suggesting three out of four factories are inactive.
In his book about North Korea, The Impossible State, ex-White House advisor Victor Cha said factory workers often bribed their bosses to skip work.
He wrote: “Factory workers pay their foreman a bribe to be signed in as working on the state payroll, which has not paid them in months.
“But then they spend the day fishing squid to sell in the markets.”
At other times the regime has relied on the “revolutionary zeal” of the people to make up for shortfalls in production, meaning long hours for workers.
It’s been called the Chollima Movement, after a mythical winged horse famed for its speed – as if to emphasise the rapid progress workers should make.
Dr Cha wrote: “The Chollima ideology drove massive inefficiencies in the economy because it always substituted long work hours for technological innovation.”
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