donate-button

Mike Rinder's Blog

Something Can Be Done About It

Monumentally Useless Buildings

By 30 Comments

A monumentally useless and empty ideal org

A monumentally useless and empty ideal org

Jeff Hawkins sent me this article.

I thought it was of interest as yet another comparison between North Korea and the bubble world of corporate scientology.

There are many parallels, from the control of information to the worship of Dear Leader and from the ridiculous event spectacles to the gulags where dissidents are reformed. But this is a slightly different angle.

“Kijong-dong may seem like a novelty, but it is part of a twentieth-century tradition of hollow architectural spectacles. Communist regimes from Moscow to Beijing often indulged in monumental and monumentally useless buildings. They were built as expressions of revolutionary zeal and the permanence of the new order.

“The official North Korean position is that Kijong-dong is a thriving community; that it contains a large collective farm (run by two hundred families) and many social services, such as schools and a hospital. Yet Kijong-dong is so close to the border that, with the aid of binoculars, people can see it is empty.”

Ideal orgs anyone? L. Ron Hubbard Hall? KCET studios?

I have reprinted the text of the article below, you can see the complete original here. 

North Korea’s creepy fake civilian village fools no one

Alastair Bonnett welcomes you to a fake place. The lights go on and off, and the roads are periodically swept clean, but the windows have no glass and there are no residents behind them. Kijong-dong, also called Peace Village, was built in the 1950s to lure potential defectors to North Korea, a display of the communist state’s progress and modernity. The question is, what remorseless logic keeps it going?

Full-scale simulated cities are rare. They are sometimes called Potemkin villages, after the Russian minister who supposedly had fake villages built, complete with glowing fireplaces, in the recently conquered lands of the Crimea. It is said that he hoped to convince Catherine II that this was a prosperous and well-populated land. Unfortunately, there seems to be little truth in this legend. Better examples come from the Second World War, when decoy towns were quite common. One of the largest was a fake Paris, built to attract enemy bombers away from the real city. But this was a hasty job, gimcrack in comparison to Kijongdong. The idea of a permanent fake civilian village, deployed to make people across the border think things are going well, seems to be uniquely North Korean.
Peace Village is a product of the armistice treaty signed in 1953 between North and South Korea. A 4-kilometer-wide demilitarized buffer was established between the two nations and each was permitted one settlement within this 250-kilometer- long no man’s land. The South decided to retain the rice-farming village of Daeseong-dong. The North Koreans chose to build Kijong-dong directly opposite it, about a mile across the frontier. It was a much larger place, and images from Google Earth show a sprawling town comprising three main centers, interspersed with farmland. Each of the centers has rows of what appear to be very large houses or public buildings, many with large gardens. Although it does not feature on many maps of the country, Kijong-dong was built to impress. The costly blue-tiled roofs on many of the concrete buildings and the electric power supply proclaim an anachronistic vision of luxury and success. In the context of the thatch-roofed peasant buildings typical of the area in the 1950s, Kijong-dong must have looked like the future. At the time, mass housing and electrification were symbols of communist progress, but it is unlikely that observers from south of the border find them impressive today. They know that North Korea is poor and that it is one of the least illuminated countries in Asia. Nighttime satellite photographs show it as a pitchy emptiness surrounded by brightly lit neighbors.
The official North Korean position is that Kijong-dong is a thriving community; that it contains a large collective farm (run by two hundred families) and many social services, such as schools and a hospital. Yet Kijong-dong is so close to the border that, with the aid of binoculars, people can see it is empty. And plenty of people do. During lulls in the level of hostility between the two countries, the border crossing draws a steady flow of tourists. They are eager to step across the demilitarized zone into the rarely visited nation to the north. Visitors, who are warned not to make eye contact with North Korean soldiers or gesture at them in any way, are taken to the nearby village of Panmunjom, from which Kijong-dong is even closer, clearly visible in the distance, though it is still very much off-limits. Panmunjom’s only attraction is the pleasure of straying into a forbidden zone. Tourists may also thrill to the official South Korean warning that their little journey across the border “will entail entry into a hostile area and possibility of injury or death as a direct result of enemy action.
Other, newer propaganda tools also compete for the skyline. A nearby 525-foot North Korean flagpole, erected in retaliation for South Korea’s putting up a 323-foot flagpole in Daeseong-dong, was, for a while, the world’s tallest. Yet Kijong-dong remains a potent and, until recently, noisy symbol. Until 2004 loudspeakers on its empty buildings pumped out denunciatory speeches and patriotic operas across the fields almost every hour of the day and night. After a few years of silence, in 2010 the speakers went back on, not long after the North Koreans had sunk a South Korean submarine, killing forty-six of its crew.
Kijong-dong may seem like a novelty, but it is part of a twentieth-century tradition of hollow architectural spectacles. Communist regimes from Moscow to Beijing often indulged in monumental and monumentally useless buildings. They were built as expressions of revolutionary zeal and the permanence of the new order. What are we to make of the 1,100 rooms of Bucharest’s Palace of Parliament (a.k.a. the House of Ceau˛sescu), the second-largest building in the world, which was still being furnished when Nicolae Ceau˛sescu was thrown from power in 1989? Or Bulgaria’s Buzludzha Monument, a vast spaceship-shaped tribute to communism, filled with garish murals, that sits, remote and inaccessible, on the top of a mountain? Kijong-dong is part of a long tradition of clumsy architectural propaganda. It is a tradition that celebrates symbolism over utility, gesture over substance. It seems desperate for everyone to admire it but only at a distance — it’s a psychopolitical complex that doesn’t just spawn fakes but lovingly maintains them.

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies.. Copyright © 2014 by Alastair Bonnett. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Comments

  1. This is a good exhibit for my own argument that the Scientology story is not so unique in this world.

    Hubbard was born a human being on this earth, like you and I… So was Miscavige.

    The chaos that we all experienced, and had to come to terms with, had it’s seeds planted long before Hubbard.

    Scientology, like North Korea, is an extreme chapter in the story of human evolution.

    Jeff often encouraged his readers to ‘dig deeper’… And it took me little digging to find some basic history lessons that put Hubard, Miscavige, et all into a rather cathartic perspective.

    Great find by Jeff… And thanks for sharing it Mike…

    Reply

  2. Are you sure that you are not jealous, Mike?
    Now that you have a South Korean lifestyle, don’t you miss your old North Korean lifestyle? Aren’t you nostalgic?

    Maybe you need help?
    Maybe you need some Adjustment Disorder Therapy. Adjusting to a South Korean lifestyle after years of North Korean lifestyle is not easy.

    Reply

  3. I have been to 기종동 or at least near to it on my visit to the southern side of the DMZ. North Korea and Scientology are very much alike. Both are really creepy.

    Reply

  5. If someone told me I had two choices, Move to north korea for the rest of my life or join the sea org, I would have to find out what part of north korea I was being sent too… lol@prison of idiots

    Reply

  6. It reminds me of the animated Christian cartoon “David and goliath” Where the dog shakes his head and says, “Oh, Davie” when David does something really silly and stupid.

    Davie McScabbitch has done as much damage to Scientology as can be done, all he can do now is hide behind his Idle Morgues, and get peoples agreement to hurt themselves.
    All along that has been the only thing he could do. He is truly stuck on the track.

    Yes SILVIA, It really sucks to be Davie!!!

    He doesn’t even like buildings, they are just something to hide behind. McScabbitch doesn’t ‘like’ ANYTHING, he’s terrified, (and from the looks of things) is starting to crack!!!

    And yes, IMHO, he’s getting help, from the many vested interests that just love seeing Scientology disabled, and are willing to help wherever they can.

    Reply

  8. What’s also interesting is that, like these communist regimes, the sea org is also a communistic society. The “government” is the sole owner of all the property right down to the emeter that can be confiscated on the whim of the fascistic leadership.

    For all of Ron’s railing against communism, it’s such an irony that he created and left his legacy to such a group.

    Reply

    • A great deal of the “admin tech” and nearly all of the Flag Orders the Sea Org operate on that LRH created are predicated in direct opposition to the “spiritual tech,” also created by him.

      While the one half of his work espouses the virtues of “granting beingness” and “not being serious” and helping people to be “up-tone” the other half is unrelentingly serious, always evaluating and derogatory, and chasing the almighty buck with unholy zeal.

      Frankly, the Sea Org is a nasty, viscous, and downright criminal organization. Its truly tragic that so many very good and well intentioned people get sucked into it. LRH did nobody any favors by creating it the way that he did.

      Reply

    • OMG!!

      This is the most bazaar film. I mean, yeah, North Korea is strange. But watching this I see so many parallels between Scientology and especially Sea Org life. I don’t even know how to talk about it. Makes me feel creepy all over again.

      Reply

    • Wonderful! Thanks for the link – so great to hear what the old man had to say about it. He speaketh sooth. It’s truly amazing how those still in can justify these extravagant expenditures, isn’t it?

      Reply

  11. China has entire cities with shopping malls ,all empty.
    Mostly to put people to work. Keeps cement business wheels turning.
    In 30 or 40 years you tear it down and start over.
    I actually own a Cement Business and this is true.
    David Miscavige has added to this with lavish furniture
    and fancy plumbing fixtures ( more pomp ) this adds to higher scrap value
    when it’s time to tear it all down for a Holiday Inn express or Water slide park.
    Again, more Cement Business, He,he, he.

    Reply

  12. Excellent article Mike. I found it fascinating learning about the stuff he is doing. It is just like Miscavige.

    ‘It is another fake, a nostalgic ruin of the future that pretends, like Kijong-dong, to want to lure us in but actually doesn’t want anyone anywhere near.”

    Reply

  14. Wow. The parallels are truly astounding. Gives data of comparible magnitude to my drop in visit to the Phoenix Ideal Morgue a while back.

    Reply

  15. Yes, North Korea has roads with no cars, hospitals with no patients and hotels and restaurants with no patrons. For Scientology, the empty orgs do serve a purpose, however. Scientology needs to build them to appear to the IRS that they are a tax-exempt religion, not a giant scam whose leader lives like a Saudi prince.

    Reply

  16. This is fascinating. Thank you for making the analogy. To see this empty and grandiose behavior reflected in other social orders makes the cognizant dissonance more relatable. It isn’t only in Scientology that this weird behavior is manifesting.

    The weird thing about Scientology is that it is a despotic culture planted right here in the middle of freedom. It’s like a deep, seething boil on a pretty face covered with makeup.

    Reply

  17. Mike,

    Great article. Yep, this cult is completely stuck in the fifties, all the way down to the mind control and political warfare tactics of the cold ward era.

    Come to present time!

    Reply

  19. Great article Mike….my favorite comments….

    It is a tradition that celebrates symbolism over utility, gesture over substance. It seems desperate for everyone to admire it but only at a distance — it’s a psychopolitical complex that doesn’t just spawn fakes but lovingly maintains them.

    and

    It is another fake, a nostalgic ruin of the future that pretends, like Kijong-dong, to want to lure us in but actually doesn’t want anyone anywhere near.

    As I read the article I kept getting pictures of a person who kinda
    looked like Miscavige but yet also looked like that Kim guy who
    runs N. Korea…..very weird.

    Reply

  20. If someone needs buildings to feel he is great, then the size of his real worth is pathetically small, solid, mesty and pitiful. It means he as a person is worth nothing. Power does not depend on buildings, nor on blind robotic people following you. It really sucks, big time, to be Miscavige.

    Reply

  21. I’m sure those completions pouring out of the SP building will simply postulate the fringe of the Internet off the face of the Earth.

    We’ll see who’ll be laughing then. Hah!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *