MSNBC’s Chris Matthews praised Pyongyang’s infrastructure this week, which is odd considering it is neither well-run nor well-maintained.
“How can a country in the economic straits, how is it able to build infrastructure like the subway system I saw this morning? This beautiful subway system? We are having a hard time doing it here,” the cable news host rambled.
“How do they get the capital? How does a country that is starving get the capital to put together those kinds of projects?” he asked this week.
His guest, Evelyn Farkas, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Obama Administration, responded, “I mean, some of it is obviously normal trade so they trade their coal with China. They have also been manufacturing some goods and sending them through the Chinese border overseas. They also have illicit trade that the North Koreans have been pretty active in methamphetamine production and sales.”
She added, “so like any economy they can make money in the normal market and black market.”
That Pyongyang has any money for construction projects is indeed an interesting question. But Matthew’s weird sort of awe for the Hermit Kingdom’s infrastructure is a bit odd, considering it is famously terrible in urban areas like Pyongyang, and even worse in rural areas.
The New York Times reported in April that North Korea was having a difficult time enticing investors due to its “record of seizing assets from foreigners, “the sanctions against it,” and, of course, its “poor infrastructure.”
In urban areas, only 37 percent of residents are using electricity, and that number is a mere 10 percent when it comes to the non-urban areas, according the Korea Energy Economics Institute’s to Kim Kyung-sul, who added that most people make up for the energy shortages by using firewood, briquettes, and liquefied petroleum gas from “private markets or self-supply.”
And though North Korea has an “extensive railway and road network,” Kim added, “the quality of the transport and logistics infrastructures are either obsolete or poorly maintained.”
Impressive indeed.
Last year, professor Andrei Lankov of the Kookmin University at Seoul wrote that, “North Korean railway technology has remained virtually unchanged since the 1930s. Until just a few years ago, one could frequently encounter a Japanese steam engine locomotive manufactured in the 1930s but still puffing along at a North Korean railway station. A Chinese-based tourist company even sold travel packages to railway history buffs willing to make the long trek into the North in order to see the last functional 1930’s era locomotive.”
“This is not the case anymore, but even the best North Korean railways rarely exceed speeds of 50km an hour while most branch lines are limited to 15-20 km an hour,” he added.
But nothing embodies the country’s infamous, soul-crushing incompetence on infrastructure better than Pyongyang’s legendary Ryugyong Hotel, which hasn’t opened its doors or hosted a single guest despite starting construction back in 1987. Though it may be close to opening (finally!), there are still serious questions about whether the so-called Hotel of Doom is even structurally sound, according to the Independent.
So, back to Matthews: Did he see state-approved images of Pyongyang’s subway line and assume from there that the capital had its act together on infrastructure?
Man, if you can’t trust information from a repressive dictatorship, what can you trust?
