Great Love for the Songnim-Style House

The Songnim-style houses built in the 1960s is associated with the warm love for the people of President who turned it around to solve the housing problem of our people as soon as possible.

President Kim Il Sung said:

"Large numbers of Songnim-style houses should be built."

The Songnim-style house was a many-storeyed apartment-house which appeared in the course of carrying out the instructions given by President Kim Il Sung to quickly solve the problem of dwelling houses of workers through a mass movement by using local materials while giving on-the-spot guidance to the then Hwanghae Iron Works in Songnim City, North Hwanghae Province between August and September, Juche 57(1968).

In August, Juche 57(1968), President Kim Il Sung, who was paying deep attention to the work of the then Hwanghae Iron Works, acquainted himself with the work of providing the workers with condition for a comfortable life in the iron works, and taught officials that Party work and welfare supply service are all work with people and work for people, and a month later he called for building many houses for workers on the second and third floors and providing them with good living conditions.

True to the teachings of the President, the officials had a serious discussion with professional officials to build two-and three-storeyed dwelling houses suited to the scenery of the city and convenient for the life of the working people. From then on, this type of dwelling house was called Songnim-style house.

The structural drawing of the Songnim-style house was rational for family life as it consisted of two living rooms, a toilet, a washroom and a kitchen.

And the walls were built of bricks, and the floor slabs, stairs, summer beams, platbands and so on were built of small-size prefabricated structural elements, so that they were so conducive to the mass construction of the dwelling houses while preventing the cold and the heat well.

The Songnim-style house was originally planned as a two-storey house, but in the course of its wide generalization, it was made into a low-storeyed dwelling, an outer corridor-type low-storeyed house, and so on, which was arranged for the family with one common stairway as the main stairway in conformity with the characteristics of the local area, and in the 1970s it was widely popularized throughout the country.

President saw to it that the Songnim-style houses were built on a large scale in the capital and local areas to provide the people with many such dwelling houses which are designed to provide the best convenience for the living of the family members.

On his field guidance to North Phyongan Province on September 8, Juche 59(1970), President said that the Songnim-style house is a house that can be built without cranes because it is good in structure, only the floor is concrete and the walls are brick-built, and stressed the need to build many Songnim-style houses in large villages such as the county seat and branch factory area to satisfactorily meet the people's growing demand for dwelling houses.

He ensured that many Songnim-style houses were built in Pyongyang, Sariwon City, North Hwanghae Province and Songnim City, and that a number of Songnim-style houses were built through all-people movement by organizing field trips and model lectures on such dwelling houses.

On September 29, Juche 59 (1970), President Kim Il Sung at a consultative meeting of officials of the central organ and officials in the construction sector of South Hwanghae Province gave detailed instructions on the construction direction and ways to build 2,000 multi-storeyed dwelling houses in Haeju City and 2,000~3,000 Songnim-style houses in the period of 6-year plan so that they could solve the problem of dwelling houses for the people, and build two-and three-storey houses of brick or weathered-gneiss blocks.

In June, Juche 60 (1971), the then Political Committee of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) saw to it that 10,000 dwellings should be built in Songnim-style house among the 20,000 dwellings to be built in Pyongyang, so as to quickly solve the problem of dwelling houses for the people.

In the days of field guidance to provinces, cities and counties, too, President always paid deep attention to the housing problem, and pointed out the issue of building the Songnim-style houses with low housing materials in a rational way as suited to the characteristics of the local areas and other issues arising in laying out the number of storeys of houses and the layout of houses and the interior and exterior of houses in a cosy way.

At a consultative meeting with officials of the Songjin Steel Plant on August 22, Juche 72(1983), President Kim Il Sung said that the new dwelling houses should be built in a high-rise house, in a Songnim style and in a central heating system, and showed warm love and care for the people's dwelling houses.

Like this, the President devoted his all to providing the people with many Songnim-style houses suited to the conditions of our country and convenient for the life of our people.

Under the wise guidance of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un who is carrying forward the lofty intention of President Kim Il Sung and Chairman Kim Jong Il who treasured the excellent national tradition of our people in our country, a number of cozy single-storey houses, low-storeyed houses and modern multi-storey apartment houses peculiar to the Korean style have been built so that a new image of civilization can be proud of in the era of the Workers' Party, and the excellent tradition of our dwelling houses is successfully inherited.