Kim Jong-un says North Korea's new airport is 'absolute perfection'
Wearing an oversized shirt, a blank expression and a haircut shaped like a neck pillow, Kim Jong Un walked through North Korea's shiny new airport terminal, which is scheduled to open on July 1. Kim was reportedly pleased with the finished version of the new Pyongyang Sunan Airport, which was the second attempt at a design that would get his approval. In November, he expressed his displeasure with the way construction was progressing by throwing what had to be an unholy temper tantrum and banishing head construction official Ma Won Chun to a rural location. That version was scrapped and rebuilt to improve the departure halls to correct "deviations" in their layout (Kim's word, not ours) and to add a restaurant, a new highway to the airport and an underground parking garage.
The new terminal also has duty-free shops stocked with candy and booze, an espresso-heavy cafe and an upscale apparel retailer. Rodung Sinmun – the official newspaper of the Worker's Party of Korea – dedicated three full pages to coverage of Kim Jong Un's visit, along with photographs of he and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, touring the facility. He looked intensely at a table in the restaurant, he stared at the baggage carousel, he leaned pensively over the balcony railing. Ruthless Communist Dictators: They're just like us!
After his tour, Kim said that he was pleased with the airport's construction, deeming it "well-built in harmony with modern aesthetic taste and national character." He also described it as "absolute perfection," which means that every construction supervisor on the project probably exhaled their relief in unison. According to one North Korean news agency, Kim said:
I feel deep remorse at the failure to show Kim Jong Il this wonderful terminal. The leader would have been very glad to hear that the airport was built wonderfully like this by our own efforts. His smiling image is vivid before my eyes.
The new terminal is six times larger than the one it replaced, which, based on the number of flights that will arrive and depart, might be overkill. Although the country aspires to increase its tourism numbers tenfold by 2017, it currently only welcomes around 100,000 foreigners each year, and the majority of those visitors are from China. Unsurprisingly, the majority of flights in and out of the new terminal will be between the North Korean capital and Beijing. But at least those travelers know that they're landing at an airport that earned Kim's symbolic thumbs up.