N. Korea: Pyongyang's construction drive said to kill hundreds of college students

North Korean college students have reportedly died in a spate of accidents at construction sites amid intense efforts by Pyongyang to prepare for a milestone political event next year, a source familiar with the issue said Tuesday.

The alleged accidents sparked rumors that an estimated 200 college students have died at various construction sites in the North's showcase capital city of Pyongyang, the source said. He did not elaborate on the alleged deaths and asked not to be identified, citing the issue's sensitivity.

The development comes as the communist country is struggling to achieve its stated goal of building a prosperous nation by next year, the centennial of the birth of the country's late founder, Kim Il-sung, the father of current leader Kim Jong-il.

North Korea has mobilized its college students to help shorten the time needed to complete massive construction projects in an apparent attempt to show off its achievements next year.

Still, the North has permitted some students of wealthy families to not participate, the source said.

The impoverished country is also making desperate efforts to confiscate foreign currency of its 24 million people to help prepare for the centennial anniversary.

North Korea plans to partially open the 105-story Ryukyong Hotel and is stepping up its efforts to quickly build apartment buildings in Pyongyang, the source said.

The cash-strapped country has been working on the hotel's interior, which has stood unfinished in downtown Pyongyang for nearly 20 years due to a lack of capital.

In 2008, the North resumed construction of the skyscraper with financing from Egypt's Orascom Telecom, the operator of a mobile phone network in the isolated communist country.

The North has completed the framework of the apartment buildings in just about four months, causing public concerns that the buildings could collapse. The concerns have made residents reluctant to move into the buildings, the source said. (Yonhap News)

An all-concrete structure like that would cost more in a capitalist nation due to labor cost. Probably even if the concrete was free. It could only be built in a slave state. All the concrete has to be poured on-site and properly reinforced. Then it must be precisely set throughout the duration of construction, with the mixture and temperature controlled based on weather conditions.

There is little information on how this thing was actually built but there are rumors the shafts are “crooked” which is a sign of concrete setting differently on each level. Perhaps they built a rough shape and intended to simply cut away the excess for completion.

Still, I'm very impressed that it's still standing in a very active seismic zone. This thing is a modern day “pyramid” and, if overdesigned enough, might stay up longer on its own than rusting steel buildings. Long after Kim is gone.

How would you make this survive an earthquake?

1) Build it on one solid rock, and hope the rock does not break. Then it would move as a solid unit, and flex little (although concrete don’t flex so good - use lots of rebar.)

2) Attach the wings to the central core with rails - let them ride up and down. Might work. But anyone in the hallway is pulp.

Ideas?

Building looks exactly like a cross-section of a large artillery shell: Complete with conical fuze on top and armor-piercing shell casing outside!

You’ve got the right idea (for making it earthquake resistant), but their execution fails. Fails in several ways, including that of executing the college students. (Hard to figure dieing “after” the outside concrete and scaffolding and rough formwork is done, it’s not very easy to kill workers who are doing the finishing work inside a building.Sure, those despotic criminals would throw away many hundreds if it were needed. But enough inside workers to write about? One or two? Many small injuries? Yes. But so many that people actually wrote about it? Maybe these students died earlier in the building period.)

You can make the building small and heavily supported and internally reinforced- That way, each small sub-section moves separately, and the whole remains workable because parts are connected flexibly. But they didn’t do that” Each of the very large wings in poured as one mass with the central tower.

The other way is to make the entire building so large and so well internally reinforced so the whole thing can withstand movement even if the displacement were right through the middle of the mass. But “wings” cannot behave that way - they will be lifted on side and dropped on the other side irregularly, and “wings” by definition are going to be more fragile at the joints to any central column than a “square” or cube type shape. Twisting will be almost impossible to resist. And, the ground would need be heavily packed down and compressed very, very carefully. In Mexico City in the 70’s, towers built by government contract failed by falling over: the building “might have been” built OK, but the ground under the building failed and the towers fell over sideways, killing thousands. Right next door, where the ground did not fail underneath the foundation, the same design tower stayed upright.

In Korea? I would not expect ANY part of the design, execution of the design, or the material itself to be correct.

If, as the article stated, the elevator (?) towers are too irregular to line up the elevator railings, then the workmanship is criminally going to fail.

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