Cars of the DPRK (North Korea)

One of the black spots in car history is the cars made in the 1970s-1990s in North Korea.

GAZ M20 POBEDA

In 1979 an American journalist named Bradley K. Martin visited the Three Revolutions Exhibition Hall. This is the place where the North Koreans show their progress in industrial development. A car was exhibited there. Martin wrote: “ handmade prototype of a sedan had been displayed at Pyongyang’s Exhibition of the Achievements of Socialist Construction during my 1979 visit. A guide there had said the country hoped to go into mass production.”  Martin made photos, but nowadays he can’t find the photos back. Confronted with photos of the Russian Pobeda, Martin said: “That could be it. What I saw was an old-looking car, as this is. Of course I don’t remember exactly what it looked like.”

According Russian car historian Andrew Thompson a couple of Pobeda’s are assembled in Pyongyang.
The problem is, we have never seen a photo of a North Korean made Pobeda.

For fun, the Russian website gaz20.spb.ru photo shopped some pictures of Kim Jong Il doing his on-the-spot guidance. In the background a shopped Russian Pobeda, they said that the car was made in the DPRK . They even had even given it a Korean name: Achimka (morning flower).

Kim’s father used the Pobeda as his staff car.

UNKNOWN CAR IN DPRK MOVIE

In the movie Yeolnebeonjjae gyeoul (열네번째 겨울) released in 1980 an unknown car shows up. We tried to identify the car, in vain. (PLEASE HELP US!) It was Raul from Finland who noticed us of the car in the internet movies cars data base.

THE MERCEDES W201 COPY

During a number of years, the North Koreans showed a Mercedes copy in the Three Revolutions Exhibition Hall.

We have 10 photos. We distinguish what we know by the colours of the cars:

1. a yellow car. We have five photos taken in Pyongyang by a German tourist  group, specifically Meinrad Frhr. Von Ow and Eckart Dege, in March 1989. They found the car at the backdoor of their hotel. The car has a round logo with flames and on the rear site is clearly written ‘Pyongyang 4.10’ (on the 10^th of April Kim Il Sung declared that, like the South, the North also should make cars).

   

2. a red car. Photo made by a German photographer named Gerhard Joren, he guesses he had taken the photo in 1994 in the Three Revolutions Exhibition Hall.  Behind the Mercedes stands a Kaengsaeng 85 cross country vehicle. The same car has been photographed twice by Japanese tourists, in January 1995. This car has a pentastar in a circle replacing the Mercedes star. We guess this is the Kaengsaeng 88.

   

3. a blue car. One photo, taken by Japanese tourists in May 1995, again in the Three Revolutions Exhibition Hall. This can be the same car as the red one, repainted.

   

4.  A poor black and white copy of a photo published in Der Stern magazine in the early 1990s (according the source). According the article, the name of the car was Paektusan. The original photo never showed up, even after consulting Stern magazine. The car has a rhombus logo.

   

So we have three names for the same car: the Pyongyang 4.10,  the Paektusan (Mount Baikdu) and the Kaengsaeng 88 (I think this was the indication in the exhibition hall, but no confirmation).

Careful study of the photos, especially the German photos which are of good quality, gives us the impression that we can speak of rebadging a German car or a German car which has been disassembled and assembled again. We have no proof of a 100% DPRK product.

Like always we need your help! Please, whenever you know more or when you have seen more, let us know!!

More about the cars from North Korea you can find in my publication Automobiles Made in North Korea.