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#1 ·
In Kim's North Korea, Cars Are Scarce Symbols of Power, Wealth

By Bradley K. Martin


Citizens commute to work on bicycles in Pyongyang July 10 (Bloomberg) -- A black Volkswagen Passat with smoked windows glides down a suburban Pyongyang road. Its license plate begins with 216 -- a number signifying Kim Jong Il's Feb. 16 birthday, and a sign the car is a gift from the Dear Leader.

Even without a 216 license plate, a passenger sedan bestows VIP status in a country where traffic is sparse and imports are limited by external sanctions and domestic restrictions alike.

Just across the border, South Korea is the world's fifth- largest automotive manufacturer. To an ordinary North Korean, though, a private car is ``pretty much what a private jet is to the ordinary American,'' says Andrei Lankov, author of a new book ``North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea.''

He estimates there are only 20,000 to 25,000 passenger cars in the entire country, less than one per thousand people.

Discouraging private car ownership isn't just a matter of ideology in a communist country, Lankov said in a phone interview from Seoul, where he teaches at Kookmin University. The passenger car, usually black and chauffeur-driven, ``is the ultimate symbol of the prosperity of high officials,'' he says. They keep the vehicles scarce ``so everybody knows they are the boss.''

Measuring, Copying

North Korea moved early -- shortly after the Korean War, and ahead of the South -- to mass-produce trucks and 4-wheel- drive Jeep-type military vehicles. Craftsmen took apart imported Soviet tractors, trucks and utility vehicles, measuring the parts to make copies.

The indigenous civilian passenger-car industry, too, mostly made knockoffs of models produced elsewhere. After importing a fleet of Mercedes-Benz 190s, the country produced replicas under local model names into the 1990s. Unfortunately, the domestically made copies were dogged by reports about ``terrible overall quality,'' says Erik van Ingen Schenau, author of a new pictorial book, ``Automobiles Made in North Korea.''

Lee Keum Ryung, a former used-car trader who defected from North to South Korea in 2004, agrees. The knockoffs came with ``no air conditioning, no heater, and they're not tightly built or sealed,'' he says. ``If you drive out of the city and return, your car will be full of dust. It's like an oil-fueled cart.'' Lee, 40, uses a pseudonym because he fears repercussions from North Korea.

Slow Recovery

Material and energy shortages that accompanied a famine in the 1990s brought state-run factories to a halt. Recovery has been slow, and Schenau said he believes even domestic production of Jeep-style vehicles has been replaced by imports from Russia and China.

Imports have similarly come to dominate what passes for the passenger-car market. Used cars -- mostly Japanese-made -- are the mode of transit for many members of the new trading and entrepreneurial class that's emerged in the last couple of decades. Under a loophole in the country's long-standing private-car ban, these vehicles typically enter the country disguised as gifts to North Koreans from their relatives in Japan's Korean community, Lankov says.

Lee says ``a relative abroad'' helped him buy his first car when he was 23. ``But as an ordinary person, I couldn't keep it under my name, and I didn't have a number plate of my own,'' he says. ``A friend was a high police official with many cars under him. I borrowed a plate.''

`A Very Affluent Life'

Lee had ``a very affluent life'' before he defected, importing 10-year-old cars from Japan and selling them both in North Korea and, for a time, across the border in China. ``I had money, status,'' he says. ``I enjoyed everything people my age could have.''

A small passenger vehicle for which his agent paid $1,500 at the docks in Japan would sell for $2,500 to $3,000, Lee says. A bigger car -- say, a Toyota Crown -- might cost him $4,000 to $5,000; he would sell it for $8,000.

While Japanese trade figures show annual exports of some 1,500 passenger cars, mostly used, to North Korea in 2005 and 2006, the total for this year is zero. After Kim's government tested a nuclear device last October, Japan placed passenger cars on a list of banned luxury exports.

Perhaps as a sign of displeasure with Japan's sanctions, Kim ordered most Japanese cars confiscated, according to a February 2007 dispatch by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. The order, if indeed it was issued, hadn't been carried out by the time of a May visit to Pyongyang, when a number of Japanese cars could be seen.

German Inroads

When a European-made import passes by, it's often owned by the state, used by high officials and foreign dignitaries. Sweden's Volvo had a hefty market share in the 1970s; Germany's Audi and Volkswagen have made inroads lately. Mercedes is particularly well-represented in Kim's personal fleet of hundreds of vehicles, according to Lee Young Kook, a defector who served in Kim's bodyguard force.

In a 2003 Yonhap News story, Lee said the security- conscious leader traveled in motorcades of identical cars to confuse would-be assassins and generally maintained 10 units each of any model so five would always be road-ready.

With the nation's access to imports constricted, a relatively new player in the market, Pyonghwa Auto Works, has attempted to fill the gap. The company was created when Seoul- based Pyonghwa Motors, which began as a car importer affiliated with Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, teamed up as majority partner in the 70-30 venture with the North Korean state-owned trading firm Ryonbong Corp.

Kits of Parts

The first assembly line was set up in 2002 at the west coast port city of Nampo to produce, from kits of parts, a version of the small Fiat Siena, called the Hwiparam (Whistle) in Korean.

So far, the factory has built about 2,000 cars and pickup trucks, according to Noh Jae Wan, a spokesman in Seoul for Pyonghwa Motors, who said it is the only manufacturer now turning out passenger cars in North Korea. According to a February announcement by Brilliance China Automotive Holdings, Pyongyhwa has agreed to let Brilliance use part of the Nampo plant to assemble Haise minibuses.

While some news accounts have mentioned the possibility that the North Korean cars may eventually be sold in the South, ``this will take time,'' Noh said in an interview. ``It can only happen when the two Koreas reach some significant agreement on trade or other international circumstances change.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Bradley K. Martin in Pyongyang at bmartin18@bloomberg.net

from: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=a31VJVRxcJ1Y&refer=asia
you can find my North Korea doucments on:
http://www.chinesecars.net/index.php?page=4
\
greetings,
 
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#289 ·
#290 · (Edited)
Erik, are you thinking that because of the reflective stickers on the Ssangma? Those are factory fitted in China, I believe.
When the vehicles get to the showroom they already have those on, even in the factory premises
The Naenara pic is from 2012 so it could have been a new vehicle.

On another note, I removed the unknown truck, it was just a GAZ-3307.
 

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#293 ·
If it isn't new, the starting point would be an existing Co-Co (three axles per bogie) locomotive like the Pulgungi. We'd need high quality photos of the bogies to see if they match any previous models.

Of course, a genuinely new-build locomotive might well be based on older designs, so determining for certain whether it is new or a rebuild might be impossible.
 
#298 ·
I have a question about this working platform.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/7-2-7...2jW7JeT-2jW6Vv6-2jW6VvM-2jW9986-jJTBKH-jGvNKW
Is there any more information about it? Presumably it was built at Chollima trolleybus factory due to resemblance to the Chollimas of simular age. They first appear on photos dating to 2007, although already not looking new. On later photos the numberplates start from 1668 and end on 1677 so going by that around around 10 were made? (As there are are couple that are missing or have never been photographed).
Where was the information about the name was taken from?
Maybe year of production?
Thanks
 
#299 · (Edited)
Welcome. These were vehicles for trolleybus and possibly tram maintenance lines when there were infrastructure/electricity problems, usually in Norh Korea the trams raise the pantograph to gain speed and then they lower it and just roll on the rails to save electricity usage, sometimes even in Pyongyang. The chassis of that vehicle is the same as the Sungri-58, a reverse engineered Soviet GAZ-51. These kind of maintenance platforms can also be seen mounted on regular trolleybuses meant for public transport. That Z badge in a circle is Pyongyang Trolleybus Factory, which indeed also produces the Chollima series. I don't think these service vehicles exist anymore, haven't seen them in any recent pictures. The source for the name is a Russian website:

http://www.gruzovikpress.ru/article...-severnoy-korei-passajirskie-kolesa-phenyana/

During the breaks in the contact network, the Pyongyang-951 automobile tower on the Sungri-58 truck chassis helps. In the 1990s, they were painted yellow-green.
I had a pic of the interior as well, it was pretty empty, I can't find it right now but I'll let you know.
 
#303 · (Edited)
Unfortunately the Flickr alternative was not a viable option to host a personal archive on. Two days ago they have deleted more than half of the pictures (even the stuff I don't have anymore). According to their guidelines only pictures taken personally by you can be uploaded there, and you can upload photography only. That means no magazines, no brochures, no technical data pages, no stamps, no nothing. And they use this batch remover called Pixsy that constantly looks for duplicates all around the web and issues takedowns for the pictures, even if I clearly mentioned they're not hosted for commercial purpose, I wasn't selling them or anything. So I don't know what to do now or which platform to use for identification/archiving, etc. The previous platform (Imgbb) was very buggy and unstable and hard to organize properly and I don't think I want to go back to that, so the project is on hold.
 
#305 · (Edited)
Hello 93TBG,

about the Pyongyang 951, the service truck. I have seen seven different registrations: Pyongyang 40-1668, Pyongyang 40-1669, Pyongyang 40-1671, Pyongyang 40-1672, Pyongyang 40-1876, Pyongyang 40-1877, (incomplete)47-59.
Here some other pictures.
 

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#313 ·
Hi! Thanks for the help, the side photo is gold!
There seemed to be 39-1423,39-1424 and 39-1439 on pre 2009 photographs.
Although they don't appear later so I think they got different registrations after. (40- don't appear before 2009 either.)
Also as well as 40-1877 there is 40-1677.
Is the *47-59 photographed in pyongyang or they were in other towns too?
 

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#306 ·
I am trying to figure out the differences between the minibuses named Jipsan (or Jipsam) and Pyongyang.
I can identify (100%) the next minibuses:
Pyongyang 77 (Pyongyang 53-1421, C-46-974)
Pyongyang 82 (Pyongyang 53-1107, Pyongyang 39-1284, 66302-6241)
Pyongyang 86 (stamp of 1992)
Jipsan 88 (stamp of 1992, Pyongyang 39-1134, Pyongyang 39-1238)
Questions:
are the Pyongyang buses made in Chongjin or in Pyongyang? If in Pyongyang, made by the Pyongyang Trolleybus Works or by another factory?
Is it possible that some are made both in Chongjin and in Pyongyang, for instance the 82?
Bus Tire Vehicle Wheel Motor vehicle


Automotive parking light Wheel Tire Bus Vehicle registration plate


Bus Automotive parking light Vehicle Wheel Land vehicle


Wheel Bus Tire Bicycle Building
 
#307 · (Edited)
Erik, I'd like to add some notes. This vehicle is a ZiU-682 made in USSR and is not North Korean: https://www.chinesecars.net/content/unknown-service-vehicle-platform
Just to make this clear, this bus wasn't made since 2015, it was only photographed in 2015: https://www.chinesecars.net/content/rungnado-5101
Going by the name, it is a 51-seat Huanghai bus made in Juche 101 (2012).
This truck was made during the Chollima Movement ~1958 and is one of the very first Sungri 58s: https://www.chinesecars.net/content/sungri-58-built-headlights
 
#310 · (Edited)
While I'd like to believe this is a North Korean trolley, this structurally matches a ZiU trolley and does not match anything else I have and/or have observed so far. I actually think it is one and it's been crudely rebuilt. We are talking scrapyard quality here. Leaving aside the assumption that this trolley has an almost non-existing pillar between the windows and the doors making it structurally unstable, please observe the window setup closely and the rest of the details, including roof shape. That's why I believe the rear doors have simply been re-positioned after rebuilding (or rather hammering) it, otherwise I wouldn't make this connection. The space between the rear windows and the rear of the trolley is too long, hence my conclusion.

 
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