Sustainable water management in North Korean cities

North Korean urban areas suffer from unreliable, sporadic water provision. Water that is provided to domestic users in urban areas has increasingly proved to be contaminated and potentially harmful to the health of North Koreans. This chapter considers the history of water and its supply to North Korean developmental history, its availability as part of Pyongyang’s governmental offer, and water management’s role in the decline of national capacity following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the famine period of the early 1990s. The chapter frames this history and the role of water management in North Korea within the framework of sustainability, considering how North Korean development in this context was rooted in unsustainable practices in the long term, practices which played a key role in the decline of water availability. The chapter discusses the specific water management policies implemented by North Korea under guidance from external partners to deal with this issue, as well as how adaptation to changed circumstances sought to bolster the level of sustainability in North Korean urban areas. Finally, the chapter explores the impact of climate change and infrastructural degradation in North Korea’s present, contesting whether water management in this context for its urban areas can ever be considered sustainable.