The escalator descends. Four minutes. You stand and watch the tunnel walls slide past — concrete, cables, concrete. Four minutes is a long time. The longest escalator in the Moscow metro takes a minute forty. Here it’s twice that. And with every second — deeper.
110 metres. The Pyongyang Metro is one of the deepest in the world. Deeper than Moscow’s (74 m at Park Pobedy). Deeper than St. Petersburg’s (86 m at Admiralteyskaya). And unlike Moscow or St. Petersburg, the depth here is not a consequence of geology. Here, the depth is deliberate.
The Pyongyang Metro was built as a bomb shelter. This is no secret — it is an architectural decision. The corridors have armoured doors: heavy, steel, thick as a palm, on massive hinges that groan when opened for demonstrations. The doors can be sealed within minutes, turning each station into a hermetic bunker with ventilation systems, air filtration, water reserves, and medical stations.
North Korea prepared for nuclear war in earnest. Not as an abstraction — as a schedule. The metro is part of that readiness. Not the only part: throughout the mountains of the country — bunkers, tunnels, underground factories. But the metro is the most visible part. The most beautiful. The most paradoxical: a bomb shelter with crystal chandeliers. A place designed for the end of the world — and decorated like a palace.
When the escalator finally carries you to the platform — four minutes, enough time to think about nuclear war, armoured doors, and the meaning of life — you stop. Because before you is a palace. Underground, marble, gleaming. And you forget why it was built.
But when you step off the escalator, you forget about the bomb shelter. Because before you is a palace.
Marble columns — not painted concrete, but real marble, pink and grey, brought from Korean quarries. Crystal chandeliers — enormous, multi-tiered, sparkling like an opera house. Every station is a hall: high ceilings, arches, bas-reliefs. Mosaics covering entire walls — floor to ceiling, tens of square metres each: workers at lathes, peasants in fields, soldiers charging, smiling children with flowers. Socialist realism taken to its absolute — vivid, detailed, masterful. Whatever you may think of the content, the craftsmanship is beyond dispute.
Each of the 16 stations has its own theme, its own décor. The Puhŭng (Revival) station — a mosaic of the rising sun over mountains. Yŏngwang (Glory) — a mosaic of jubilant masses. All the panels were created by masters of the Mansudae Studio, North Korea’s largest artistic workshop, employing thousands of painters and sculptors. (This same studio produces the monuments that the DPRK exports to Africa and Southeast Asia — North Korean-made statues stand in dozens of countries around the world.)
And — silence. A strange silence for a metro. No advertising — not a single poster, sticker, or screen (in their place, newspapers in glass display cases on the platforms: Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the Central Committee of the Korean Workers’ Party). No announcements beyond station names. No musicians. No beggars. No crowd noise — though there are enough people on the platform. Everyone is quiet. Or speaking softly. Like in a library. Or a temple. Or like people who have learned not to draw attention to themselves.
A ticket costs 5 won. Half an American cent. The cheapest metro on the planet. For comparison: in Moscow — 62 roubles (~70 cents), 140 times more expensive. The trains are old German carriages from the Berlin metro, purchased after German reunification (East Berlin sold off its rolling stock; Pyongyang was buying), and new Chinese ones — bright, air-conditioned. On the walls of the old carriages — portraits of leaders in golden frames. On the floor — a cleanliness that would make the Tokyo Metro envious.
Two lines, 16 stations (some sources say 17; North Korea does not publish accurate metro maps, and the number of stations is a subject of debate among foreign researchers). The names are ideological: Puhŭng (Revival), Yŏngwang (Glory), Pulgŭnbyŏl (Red Star), Kaesŏng (Triumph), Kwangmyŏng (Light). Each name is a manifesto. Each station is a museum. Every journey — 4 minutes down on the escalator, a ride between stations, 4 minutes back up.
For a long time, foreigners were only permitted to see two stations — they were shuttled back and forth, shown the “showcase” halls. A conspiracy theory emerged: did the other stations even exist? Perhaps the metro was a prop, with two decorative halls and nothing more? The theory was put to rest in the 2010s when the DPRK began allowing visitors to travel the full route — all the stations turned out to be real, and all of them — marble and chandeliers.
Eight minutes of escalator per day — if you go there and back. Eight minutes standing on a step, watching the concrete tunnel walls — grey, threaded with cables and ventilation pipes — and thinking: how deep am I right now? Thirty metres? Fifty? Eighty? And what is above my head? How many tons of rock between me and the sun?
You emerge above ground. Four minutes up — the same concrete walls, the same cables, the same hum of ventilation. And then — light. Daylight. Your eyes adjust. You stand on a pavement — wide, empty, perfectly clean. Not a single cigarette butt. Not a single scrap of paper. Not a single smear of chewing gum (gum is a scarce commodity in North Korea, and chewing it in public is not done).
Above — a city that does not exist on any Google map. A city built for three million people but looking as though only thousands live there. A city where the Arch of Triumph stands 60 metres tall, ten metres taller than the one in Paris (North Koreans mention this at every opportunity). Where the Juche Idea Tower rises 170 metres — like a fifty-storey building, with a torch at the summit that burns through the night. Where the Ryugyong — the pyramid hotel, 330 metres, 105 floors — has stood unfinished since 1992, visible from every corner of the city, yet absent from the official maps of Pyongyang. As if the building does not exist. 330 metres of concrete — and it is not there.
The streets are wide as runways. Built for parades and tanks, not pedestrians. And — empty. Few cars: a private vehicle in North Korea is a privilege. Instead of traffic lights — traffic controllers: young women in blue uniforms, batons in hand, standing at intersections with the posture of ballet dancers, conducting traffic that barely exists. They are one of the most photographed “sights” of Pyongyang. And one of the most enigmatic.
In the evening — a walk along the bank of the Taedong River. Lights reflect in the water. The Juche Tower burns on the far bank. The Ryugyong pyramid is lit by LED panels: on one side — propaganda animations, the DPRK flag, slogans. On the other — darkness. Half the building glows, half does not. Like a metaphor. Like North Korea itself: one side for display. The other for those on the inside.
Pyongyang. Capital of the most closed country in the world. A city where the metro is a bomb shelter with chandeliers. Where the tallest hotel is invisible. Where eight-lane boulevards see barely enough cars to fill one. Where traffic controllers stand at intersections like ballerinas, conducting air.
And you — are inside.
A year after this metro opened — in January 1968 — something happened in the waters off the North Korean coast that nearly started a nuclear war. An American ship. 83 crew members. And a captain who made a decision that would be debated for half a century.
