Amid the many hardships and privations of life in North Korea, there are a few places that offer fairly lavish accommodations, with swimming pools, hot springs and advanced medical facilities: nursing homes for veterans of the 1950-53 Korean War.
But the soldiers who fought in the “Great Fatherland Liberation War” who are still alive today are now mostly nonagenarians, the nursing homes are becoming vacation resorts used by the wealthy elite, including young people, residents told Radio Free Asia.
And that’s generating bitterness among the public because most people can’t afford to stay in the nursing homes, meaning that only the tiny upper crust of well-connected people who hold all of the country’s wealth and power can stay there.
“A few days ago, I heard from an acquaintance of mine who is an official at a major company in Chongjin City that his college student son had visited a war veterans’ nursing home,” a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“I was shocked to hear that his son had booked the veterans’ nursing home and spent a few days eating and playing well with his friends there,” she said.
Pet project
The nursing homes were a pet project of supreme leader Kim Jong Un, who ordered each province to start building them in 2015. State media at the time cast Kim as a leader concerned about the elderly veterans, whose numbers have dwindled.
The North Hamgyong resident said that staying in the nursing home costs 40,000 won (US$4.40) per night for the room only, or 100,000 ($11) if the visitor uses the various amenities – a vast sum for most North Koreans who are scraping by on meager salaries and selling goods in markets.
According to her acquaintance, there were no war veterans in the nursing home at all, she said.
“There were only workers and young people in their prime working age,” she said. “They are opening the nursing home to the public so that they can earn money.”
Many of the nursing homes made the shift to temporary lodging out of necessity, she said.
The government was supposed to provide food and fuel for the residents and maintain the buildings. When that did not happen, the government left it to the nursing homes to become self-sufficient. Opening to the public became the only way to keep them afloat.
Generating resentment
Another resident, from the northwestern province of North Pyongan, told RFA that the war veterans’ nursing home there can be used by anyone with money.
“Those nursing homes for war veterans are the most-up-to-date style of buildings in each province, which is what the authorities paid attention to,” she said.
The buildings were built in a folk style with traditional roof tiles, and inside there are “health facilities such as a hot spring and music room,” she said.
But news that the wealthy can pay to use the nursing homes and enjoy amenities like hot springs is generating resentment among ordinary people, she said.
“Newspapers and TV only praise veteran soldiers as heroes on certain anniversaries,” she said. “But the reality is that there is no real support for them.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.