The metro is the main means of public transportation in Pyongyang, capital city of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Some of its stations were opened in 1973 for the first time, and the number of them increased with the formation of new streets and expansion of residential quarters in the capital city. Hundreds of thousands of people use the metro every day, or more on holidays and Sundays.
To the Korean people the metro is not only means of transportation but also a venue of ideological and cultural education. The individual stations have large mosaic murals, sculptures and other kinds of artworks dedicated to the themes related to their names. They intensively reflect the course of development of the country.
Kaeson Station has a bust of President Kim Il Sung delivering a speech on his triumphant return to the country after liberating it from the Japanese imperialists’ military occupation, and large mosaic murals that depict the people cheering for him, and those who turned out for the building of a new country at that time.
Jonu Station has mosaic murals depicting the peasants who were in rapture over the land they received from the country thanks to the agrarian reform.
Recently several stations have been spruced up with artworks of new styles showing newly-built structures and the improving life of the people. The passengers say that they can learn the history of change of the country and its vibrant reality in the metro.
The walls of underground halls, linking corridors and escalator sections in Jonu Station are hung with eye-catching pictures of the improved Samjiyon City, Jungphyong Vegetable Greenhouse Farm, Yangdok Hot Spring Resort, Ryomyong Street and other new streets. And graceful illuminations and ceiling decorations add to the impressiveness of the pictures.
The country changes for the better not only on the ground but also underground year by year.
The Pyongyang Metro, which is called underground palace, greets people with new features of civilization.
