- North Korea is arguably
the most secretive country on earth.
This hermit kingdom is known mostly
for human rights abuses, military provocations,
and outlandish stories like former leader Kim Jong-il
sinking 11 holes in one the first time he played golf.
Hmm, I really wanna know who decided on 11.
We can't say it was 18 holes in one.
That would be outlandish.
But 11, that's a sweet spot.
Let's not get it twisted.
North Korea is a bad place.
Between 150,000 and 200,000 North Koreans
live in prison camps
with an estimated 40% mortality rate.
The government makes its money by exporting
counterfeit pharmaceuticals, methamphetamine,
and selling small arms to terror groups.
And the culture is so repressive,
they even control your hair.
All North Koreans must have one of 28
government approved haircuts.
Despite all this, the people still need to get around.
But how did they achieve that in such dire conditions?
Well, today on "Wheel House,"
we'll be taking you inside the strange and mysterious
North Korean car industry.
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Because North Korea is so isolated,
there's no way to know for sure,
but it might have the lowest rate
of car ownership in the world.
Experts estimate that there are around
30,000 vehicles on the road
for a population of 25 million people.
That's around one car for every 833 people.
Imagine if a car was harder to get than a PlayStation 5.
One big reason, officially, private citizens can't own cars.
So generally, North Korean drivers
must have government connections.
But there also aren't many cars to begin with
because of the government's longstanding
policy of isolation called Juche.
It might sound like a fancy facial hygiene product,
but Juche has actually been
the official government ideology of North Korea
for over 70 years.
The roots of Juche and North Korea itself
go back to the aftermath of World War II.
Prior to the war, the Korean peninsula
was a Japanese territory.
But after Japan surrendered in 1945,
the Allies took it and divided it into two zones.
The south, which was occupied by the US,
and the North which was occupied by the Soviet Union.
Their initial intention was to set up an independent
and reunified Korean government.
But with Cold War tensions ratcheting up,
two super powers couldn't agree on terms.
So in 1948, 2 separate Korean governments were formed.
The USSR installed a guerilla military leader
named Kim Il-sung, who previously had worked
with the Red Army and the Chinese government to lead
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, AKA North Korea.
Kim created the Juche ideology,
which was basically an ultra nationalist twist
on his friends Stalin and Mao.
Juche directly translates to self-reliance.
Kim believed that because
"Man is the master of his destiny,"
his nation could only achieve perfection
by becoming strong and completely independent.
So when he took control of the DPRK,
he cut off North Korea economically and diplomatically
from most of the world, and remains that way to this day.
North Korea's devout isolation means that Western cars
have never been imported into the country
on any kind of scale.
The only car manufacturer
to make inroads in North Korea was Gaz, G-A-Z.
Which was founded and used to be owned
by the Soviet government.
The Gaz factory in Russia was originally built
with help from Ford.
And the first car built there was a Russian version
of Ford's model A called the Gaz A.
During World War II, Gaz then built
Chevrolet designed military transports for the Allies.
The factory survived heavy bombing during the war.
And afterwards, GAZ started designing their own vehicles,
including the M20 Pobeda.
This stylish sedan was possibly the first passenger vehicle
to be assembled in North Korea
because the Soviets built an auto plant in Pyongyang
to produce the Pobeda, the Gaz 51 military truck,
and the Gaz 69 off-road vehicle.
It's hard to guess how many foreign cars
have made their way into North Korea over the years,
but it's likely that the most prevalent is the Gaz Volga.
The Volga was a Mercedes style executive sedan
built between 1956 and 2010.
And during the height of the Cold War,
thousands of them were reportedly exported to the North.
Some of the few reporters allowed to enter Pyongyang
have reported that old Volgas,
specifically the Gaz 24 built between 1970 and 1985,
are still being used as taxis today.
So we've established that as a country,
North Korea has imported
around the same number of cars as Dan Bilzerian.
That means that at least a chunk
of the 30,000 vehicles on the road
must be manufactured domestically.
There are basically only two car companies
located in North Korea.
The first is Sungri Motor Plant.
It was founded in 1950 as the Tokchon motor plant
shortly after the start of the Korean war.
Not surprisingly, the factory made
almost exclusively heavy duty SUVs, construction vehicles,
and military transports.
In 1975, the plant was renamed Sungri
after the Korean word for victory.
Most of the notable Sungri vehicles
are copies of Gaz models.
According to defectors, North Korean car makers at Sungri
and elsewhere would use a procedure
called anatomy plan drawing,
in which they would import a foreign car, take it apart,
and sketch the design of their brand new North Korean car
by copying the pieces.
The Sungri 58 is a clone of the Gaz 51.
The Sungri 4 combined a Gaz 69 with a Jeep.
And the company has also copycatted
Volkswagen and Mercedes among others.
Like many things in North Korea,
the government's claims about Sungri Motor Plant
seemed based in an alternate reality.
In 1980, annual production was reported to be
20,000 units per year.
However, experts say Sungri more likely turned out
between 6,000 and 7,000 units per year at most.
Sungri also claims to have built a truck
called the ZR 5000 that boasts a 1,000 horsepower engine,
and hits a top speed of about 200 kilometers per hour.
But, let's just say it hasn't made an appearance
at the Geneva Motor Show.
The other car company in North Korea
is called Pyeonghwa Motors, which means peace in Korean.
It's a good name since Pyeonghwa was actually founded
as a joint venture between North Korea and South Korea.
This was during a period in the late '90s early 2000s
when South Korea adopted a sunshine policy
that softened its stance towards the North.
The deal was organized by the Unification Church,
a quasi Christian quasi cult based in Seoul
that believes in the reunification of Korea
as one of its core tenets.
The church and the South Korean government
spent about $55 million to build
the Pyeonghwa factory in Pyongyang,
where the company immediately started building
rebadged copies of foreign cars.
Because of the Unification Church's connection
to Mekong Auto Corporation in Vietnam,
which had a licensing deal with Fiat,
the first car built by Pyeonghwa
was carbon copy of the Fiat Siena called the Hwiparam,
which means whistle in Korean.
Three years late came the Peokkugi,
meaning cuckoo based on the Fiat Doblo.
I'm sorry if I demolished those pronunciations.
I'm really trying.
After the licensing deal with Fiat expired,
later models of Hwiparam and the Peokkugi
were based on cars made by Chinese companies,
Brilliance and Shuguang.
Meanwhile, the luxurious Pyeonghwa Zunma, meaning steed,
is a copy of South Korea's SsangYong Chairman.
Unfortunately, though Brilliance and Shuguang
are known for copying cars themselves.
And the Chairman is a thinly veiled Mercedes rip off.
So Pyeonghwa cars are actually copies of copies.
Meaning they look like the real thing from 10 feet away,
but the illusion starts to fall apart if you get too close
and the car starts to fall apart after you drive it.
From 2002 to 2011, Pyeonghwa built 6,368 cars total
despite a factory capable of producing 10,000 annually.
The company reportedly turned a small profit
in 2009 and 2010, but not enough to keep
the Unification Church invested.
After trying and failing to sell their ownership stake
for $200 million, they instead donated it
to the North Korean government in exchange
for potential contracts and the hotel business.
At any rate, Pyeonghwa now has exclusive rights
to build new cars and also sell used cars in North Korea.
How do they manage that when car ownership is illegal?
I don't know.
Like I said, North Korea is very mysterious.
We do know, however, that Pyeonghwa is the only company
in North Korea that has ever been confirmed to advertise.
A series of Pyeonghwa billboards and TV commercials
were produced to show residents
that their country is able to compete
with Western auto makers.
It's worth noting one other car manufacturer
which tried to build perhaps the only original automobile
in North Korean history, who's called Pyongsang Auto Works.
And it made a car called the Kaengsaeng 88,
which meant self-reliance or Juche mobile.
This car was loosely based on the Mercedes-Benz W201,
which was whipped up after Kim Il-sung declared in 1987
that if South Korea could make cars,
then North Korea could do the same.
However, only a couple of prototypes were made.
The resulting vehicles reportedly
had no heating or air conditioning,
and were prone to fill with dust while driving.
And that's not what you want in a car.
There are only two categories of cars on North Korean roads.
The military takes up a huge portion
of the country's budget and employs 4.7% of the population.
So it makes sense that many vehicles
we see in photos from North Korea are made by the army,
which reportedly has its own production facilities.
There are also a surprising number of foreign luxury cars
that have found their way into the country.
Some of them are Volvos because in the 70s,
Kim Il-sung reportedly agreed to purchase
a thousand Volvo 144s from neutral Sweden.
The cars were delivered, but apparently he skipped the bill.
Some of those free Volvos
are still puttering around the city today.
Photos of Pyongyang also often feature
a 70s or 80s black Mercedes S class.
One defector told South Korean newspapers
that they're basically the official car of the government.
And the higher rank the politician,
the higher up on the model line they get.
Reports also indicate that some people in the government
use luxury Toyotas from Japan.
In fact, foreign cars were common enough that in 2007,
Kim Jong-il ordered the confiscation
of all Japanese built vehicles
reportedly after one broke down in the street
and blocked traffic.
Western car makers got the last laugh on him though,
because during his funeral parade in 2011,
his casket was carried by a Lincoln Continental limousine.
Does the future of the North Korean car industry
look any different than the past?
The short answer is not really.
At a trade fair in 2013, the DPRK surprised observers
by announcing an absurd 36 new Pyeonghwa models.
But upon closer examination,
experts confirmed that every single one of them
was a Chinese made car rebadged with Pyeonghwa logos,
new names, and one page leaflets.
However, there is one somewhat positive sign
that maybe the people of North Korea
will eventually get actual access
to modern day auto technology.
Their current ruler, Kim Jong-un,
the grandson of Kim Il-sung, is a car lover.
In 2017, he visited a weapons
and truck manufacturing facility,
and called for the need to establish
a modern automotive industry in his country
according to Pyongyang's state media.
Kim Jong-un also reportedly has an extensive
personal car collection, surprise surprise,
that includes an Audi R8, Range Rover 5.0,
a Rolls Royce Phantom,
and several Mercedes S classes and Maybach.
All of which he somehow acquired
in violation of international sanctions.
Rumor has it, he even has a special car just for pooping in.
Weird.
Of course, rumor also has it he doesn't poop or pee at all,
which is somehow more believable than the 11 holes in one.
Look, North Korea is an objectively crappy place.
The vast majority of citizens are treated horribly,
while a select few get to drive Benzes.
The history of their car culture is bizarre and interesting,
but mostly it's really short,
which reflects the lack of basic necessities
everywhere in the country.
On behalf of our fellow enthusiasts
living under the dictatorship,
let's hope that changes sooner rather than later.
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- 10,000
I did it.
I counted to 10,000 while doing six bicep curls.
Anyway, don't forget to download Monster Legends
before February 6th using the link in the description,
and collect your reward.
Thank you very much for watching "Wheel House."
This was a pretty interesting one this week, I think.
Again, very secretive country.
Who knows when things will change?
I'm gonna put a link in the description.
Donate to a good organization to help improve
the lives of people living in that country.
Be kind, and I'll see you next time.