Hot water is so over-rated.
Kim Jong-un has unveiled a huge new 770ft skyscraper complex hailed by officials as ‘ultra modern’ – despite the most luxurious penthouse apartments having no hot water.
Foreign reporters had earlier been warned to expect a ‘big and important’ event in the secretive state today – but it turned out to be a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the housing project.
Thousands of cheering North Koreans watched on as the dictator opened the sprawling Ryomyong Street development, which includes 5,000 flats.
The tallest of the buildings is 70 stories while North Korean Premier Pak Pong Ju insisted they ‘incorporate the latest architectural science and technology, including solar and geothermal technology, and the greening of roofs and walls’.But reporters shown around showpiece penthouse apartments – finished with ice green wallpaper and purple sofas – found that none of them had hot water supplies.
It comes amid reports Kim Jong-un has ordered 600,000 residents out of the city to make way for the country’s elite. But there are some suggestions the move was part of Kim’s preparations for war amid heightened tensions with the West and after the US sent an ‘armada’ of warships to the the Korean Peninsula.
Officials to the left of him, generals to the right, and in the middle of mounting tensions over his nuclear ambitions, Kim opened the prestige housing project with huge crowds of his adoring citizens looking on.
Completion of the development, just down a wide avenue from the mausoleum where Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-Sung and father Kim Jong-Il lie in state, was repeatedly promised in time for Saturday’s 105th anniversary of the birth of the North’s founder.