And today, belt-tightening has even seeped into this capital city's fanciest hotel, the Koryo. Lights are kept dim, making it difficult to read. Well-furnished rooms hover just above freezing, warmed by space heaters. In a place where Americans may not leave the hotel unescorted and television sets have only one channel, guests spend a lot of time looking down at Pyongyang from 15 floors up. Insight comes in snippets of conversation and glimpses caught through windows.
Buses exist, but they are far rarer.
Even on a bitterly cold day, what is most impressive in and around Pyongyang is the slow-moving stream of humans along every highway and street mostly women with brightly colored head scarves and dark padded jackets of gray, blue or brown, lugging large cloth packs, sometimes fixed to frames of sticks. In these hard times, they are trading goods with friends or taking food to relatives, foreigners who have lived in North Korea say. They report to work, even if fuel shortages have forced their factory to operate at half speed, because government food allotments are tied to working. And, on Fridays, they build monuments. On a recent Friday afternoon, on a road heading out of the capital, white apartment blocks suddenly gave way to huge piles of dirt, and hundreds of busy men and women clustered around red banners.