Wheels have long been a sign of economic status for both individuals and nations, and on the lightly trafficked streets of Pyongyang, capital of North Korea, electric bicycles are the hottest new ride on the road.
Almost unseen two years ago, the Chinese-made two-wheelers are a common site last week in the city, which is hosting the first congress of the nation’s ruling Workers’ Party in 36 years.
Kim Jong-un, whose family has run the North for nearly 70 years, is expected to consolidate his leadership at the congress.
Photo: Reuters
While pedal-powered bikes still predominate on Pyongyang’s wide avenues, the electric bike trend began in the last year, locals and foreign residents of the city said.
On Saturday, a journalist covering the congress saw six of the bikes in the space of 10 minutes.
“You can carry luggage,” said Kim Chol-jin, a computer science student at Kim Chaek University of Technology, who was riding his electric bike along Mirae Scientists Street.
“My wife bought me this to help shorten my commute,” he told journalists, who were accompanied by a government guide.
The proliferation of electric bicycles follows another recent local consumer trend: a surge in residential usage of LED light bulbs and solar panels, to get around the country’s chronic electricity shortage.
A bike made by a Chinese company called Pingxiang Anqi Bicycle Co (安騎) was for sale last week in Pyongyang’s Kwangbok Department Store for 2.62 million won — about US$330 at the unofficial exchange rate of 8,000 won to the US dollar.
While that is well beyond the reach of the average North Korean, an expanding grey market economy has given rise to a growing consumer class known as donju, or “masters of money.”
Most residents still commute by foot or on the city’s crowded buses.
Ou Xiongfei (歐雄飛), sales manager at another company, Benling Cycle Tech Limited Co (本鈴車業科技) in Dongguan, China, said its electric bikes and motorbikes are exported via trading companies to countries, including Argentina, Iran and North Korea.
“Lots of our e-bikes and e-motorcycles are exported to North Korea,” she said by telephone.
Traffic is getting busier in Pyongyang, which last year began laying out its first dedicated bicycle lanes.
To ease congestion, authorities have even introduced a system to alternate the days vehicles are allowed on the once all-but empty roads.
Traffic is still far from gridlock, but electric bikes have now joined the taxis, a growing fleet of private cars, and the Soviet-era trolleybuses that have plied the capital for decades.
The trolleys are hooked up to the electricity grid, making them vulnerable to outages, so electric bikes are an increasingly popular alternative when power does not flow to the people.
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