North Korea is not known to be a hotspot for amusement parks. However, I was doing some Google Earthing and found a curious place: the Mangyongdae Fun Fair. It looks fun enough, but it does not seem a lot of people are having fun. I ran into this picture:
(Source) I saw some other pictures of the amusement park, but it seems pretty empty. I do not know much of the story behind it. North Korean Economy Watch has a description:
I had visited the fun fair the previous year, but to my surprise I discovered the park is much larger than I thought and it has two entrances.? This time around, I visited a completely different part of the park.? Whereas the roller coaster was the big show last year, this? time it was the log flume.? I always thought of log flumes as particular to logging in the US, but maybe they use/d them here as well.? Anyway, no one was at the park this year, so the whole place had a bit of a ghost-town feel to it.
Sure looks like it from one of his pictures. If anybody knows more info on it, that would be good. Anyway, I am sure the reason why it may be in disrepair and underused is the money problem, but like the hotels, nobody is going to visit them. Again, my best guess is, it is used for propaganda purposes as shown here. While it does not show the above park, it does show this:
Yes, the Mangyongdae Swimming Pool. Both this picture and the video shows families having fun, kids eating ice cream (that must be an ultra-rare treat in North Korea) and even showing the Great Leader smiling at his amazing accomplishment for the happiness of his formerly downtrodden people.? Looking around Google, there is no information on the Mangyongdae Swimming Pool other than a swimming pool in the Children’s Palace, so where is this? I do not know if this is still in use, or the current status.
Anybody know?
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It is true that since the death of Kim il Sung and the Arduous March many facilities have broken down and are not in use anymore. An aquaintance of mine who had visited this park many years ago commented on how sad their state of repair was today. There is also a second amusement park near the Arch of Triumph, and a third in the Munsu District of East Pyongyang across the river from the May Day Stadium.
The particular swimming pool and waterslide pictured above are located near the Manyongdae fun fair. It is identified on my North Korea Uncovered project as “Manyongdae Wading Pool” in the “Cultural” folder’s “Leisure” sub-folder.
The other (Luna Island) pools shown in the video are on the other side of town. They are labeled “Swimming Pools (Abandoned)” in the “Sports-Swimming” folder. This is not a good place to build pools for the obvious reason that this island is vulnerable to flooding by the Taedong River. Also, getting there is a hike for just about everyone.
The video from the inside of the “typical, modern home” came from the apartment blocks just north of the Koryo Hotel in the area the Pyongyang expat community calls “the forbidden city.” They are located in the same compound as the Workers Party headquarters, and are some of the few homes to have air conditioning!
Thank you so much for the insight. I knew you might have the answer because of the extensive Google Earth resources. I would also like to thank you for that hard work. It has me looking around for hours seeing all the strange stuff that is North Korea.
As for the “typical modern home”, I had to wonder if it was only for the very elite because even those living in Pyongyang live in much worse conditions than the one in the propaganda video. Two come immediately to mind: “A Day in the Life” where the apartment is pretty small in pretty bad repair. The other is in National Geographic’s documentary where a relatively privileged family living in pretty bad conditions as well.
When I went to Pyongyang last month during the heavy flooding, I saw this park but it was closed. From the road, we could get a real sense of how deep the water was as the roller coaster track was half submerged. On August 15, their national holiday, we went to another fun park that was still opened. There were no large rides like roller coasters, but there was still the Wheel of Death, a Ferris Wheel, and a few carnival games like “Throw the Rock at the American Soldier”.
Jake, I was going to ask about the flooding. Just how bad was it? This may sound very morbid, but did you get any pictures of the damage?
Hi Jack— unfortunately we were not permitted to take any pictures of anything like that. I saw a few of the fellow tourists in our group take some, but I didn’t want to risk. If you’d like I can ask the others if they have any and send them to you. Great site by the way!!
Thanks for the kind words.
Man, I had a bad feeling you would say that. I was also wondering why they let people have tours after flooding like that. I guess they need the cash…
Icecream on street stalls - the 7-11 kind soft vanilla icecream in cones… costs 200 won when I went in May this year. I even spent won to buy the icecream. Got the won from eating at this restaurant on Yanggakdo which accepted RMB and gave us won as change…