Behind the Wheel of Change: North Korea’s Car Culture and the Politics of Movement
When Kim Jong Un visited the newly transformed “Amisan Automotive Technology Service Center” in spring 2025, what he praised as a “specialized comprehensive service base” represented something more complex than improved urban transportation. The facility, formerly the Hwasong Vehicle Maintenance Center, has become the centerpiece of a carefully orchestrated system that mobilizes multiple state agencies—from the Central Committee’s Economic Department to the Ministry of State Security—while creating new opportunities for individual mobility that would have been unimaginable in previous decades.
North Korea’s new car rental system in Pyongyang reveals three significant developments: the regime is monetizing mobility through state-controlled enterprises while generating foreign currency, ordinary citizens are experiencing unprecedented personal freedom through temporary vehicle access, and women are quietly challenging traditional roles by obtaining driver’s licenses and starting transportation businesses. This analysis examines how a seemingly simple commercial service reflects deeper tensions between state control and individual autonomy in North Korean society.
State-Designed Freedom of Movement
Car rental in North Korea isn’t just a business venture—it is a carefully orchestrated operation involving the regime’s most powerful institutions. From the Central Committee’s Economic Department and Cabinet to trading companies under the Ministry of State Security, plus Pyongyang’s people committee and the city’s Hwasong District, this system mobilizes the entire apparatus of state control.
Here is how it works: North Korea’s wealthy entrepreneurial class, the donju, import and register vehicles, then supply them to state-run service centers that rent them out for profit. The revenues flow back through a network of state agencies, each taking their cut.
But beneath the veneer of enhanced convenience lies a more calculated purpose. With daily rental fees around $100 and rigorous background checks, this system functions as both a foreign currency generator for the state and a tool of social control—only wealthy government officials and members of the wealthy entrepreneurial class, or donju, can participate.
This is not new territory for North Korea. The Korea Institute for National Unification noted in a 2015 report that the country’s vehicle rental and transport systems have long served as foreign currency earning networks, managed by powerful institutions to influence commerce and distribution channels.[1] What we are seeing in Hwasong District today is simply the latest iteration of a strategy North Korea has been refining for over a decade—turning mobility into both profit and control.
Emergence of New Social Landscapes
For those select North Koreans with access to the service, car rentals are opening doors to a kind of freedom they have rarely experienced. Young couples in Pyongyang who once relied on taxis for dates now chart their own courses—driving to secluded parks, trying new restaurants, or escaping to the city’s edges. Renting a car to celebrate an anniversary or simply dropping a partner off at home has become more than a convenience; it is a taste of independent living in a society where independence is scarce.
Businesspeople, too, are discovering new possibilities. When time-sensitive deals arise or their reputation depends on quick delivery, rental cars provide opportunities that were once impossible without vehicle ownership. Speed and reliability suddenly become competitive advantages accessible to anyone with the right connections and cash.
But perhaps the most remarkable shift involves women breaking barriers. From Socialist Women’s Union of Korea members and university students to housewives, women across Pyongyang are quietly obtaining driver’s licenses and practicing in secret.[2] Some reports even describe wealthy women in the city’s outskirts registering used minivans as private taxis, transforming themselves from passengers into entrepreneurs.
This isn’t merely about acquiring new skills. It represents a quiet rebellion against rigid gender expectations and a move toward personal choice. When daughters share licensing tips with their mothers, or wives get licensed before their husbands, these small acts signal something larger—a generation of North Korean women refusing to remain on the sidelines of their own lives.
The Ownership Mirage
Despite North Koreans’ growing fascination with automobiles, the dream of private vehicle ownership crashes against a wall of bureaucratic reality. While the law technically permits individual car registration, there is a catch that stops most people cold: proving where the money used to purchased cars came from.[3]
In North Korea, the purchase of cars is overseen by the Cabinet’s Transportation Department and, on the provincial, city, and county levels, by the vehicle management departments of people’s committees (local governments). Vehicle purchase funds must trace back to state-approved sources—overseas work assignments or official foreign currency remittances. This creates an impossibly narrow pathway. Only a select few qualify: second-to-fourth generation overseas compatriots or officially dispatched workers abroad. For ordinary people, these requirements are simply too high.
But even the lucky few who clear this hurdle face new obstacles. Private vehicles, including rentals, come with movement restrictions that defeat much of their purpose. The regime’s No. 10 checkpoints—security control posts that monitor inter-provincial movement—ensure that even legal car owners and renters can’t simply hit the road and go where they please.[4]
These realities have spawned creative workarounds. Many people register vehicles under enterprise names or rent license plates, paying fees to operate under corporate cover.[5] It is a system that allows them to avoid crackdowns while enjoying relative freedom of movement—a practical solution to an impractical system.
This creates a basic contradiction in North Korea: cars represent personal freedom, but the state strictly limits how people can use them. The difference between what North Koreans want and what their government allows has never been clearer.
Licenses as Liberation
Driver’s licenses in North Korea have evolved into something far more significant than vehicle operation permits—they represent tangible markers of personal agency within an authoritarian system. The 18-month waiting lists for driving tests reveal more than bureaucratic inefficiency; they expose North Koreans’ profound hunger for autonomy, even in its most constrained forms.
This transformation reflects a deeper sociological shift. Driving has become a form of cultural capital that reshapes urban navigation, social relationships, and economic opportunities. The proliferation of vehicles signals a fundamental change in daily consciousness, where transportation becomes a vehicle for reimagining possibility itself.
The emergence of car rental businesses provides a particularly revealing lens into this phenomenon. These enterprises don’t merely expand commercial services—they create temporary spaces of self-determination. When North Koreans rent vehicles, they are buying brief experiences of choice and control.
This automotive culture intersects with broader power dynamics around gender, generation, and class. As steering wheels increasingly fall into the hands of women, youth, and emerging entrepreneurs, traditional hierarchies face subtle but persistent challenges. These groups are claiming physical and symbolic territory through mobility, suggesting that social change may be occurring through accumulated micro-resistances rather than dramatic political upheaval.
For international observers, these developments demand a recalibration of human rights discourse. The focus on spectacular violations—executions, prison camps—while necessary, obscures quieter but equally significant struggles for everyday freedoms. The “right to move” and “freedom to choose,” even in circumscribed forms, represent meaningful assertions of human dignity that merit recognition and support.
Policymakers crafting North Korea strategies should consider how to nurture these emerging forms of autonomy. Rather than assuming change must flow from elite political transformation, they might explore how to expand spaces for individual agency from the ground up. Sometimes the most profound revolutions begin not with grand gestures, but with ordinary people gripping steering wheels and choosing their own direction.
- [1]
Han Dong-ho, Kim Su-kyung, Lee Kyung-hwa, Korea Institute for National Unification 2017 Special Report, “Controlling North Koreans Through Travel Permits,” p.25
- [2]
North Korean women have technically been allowed to obtain driver’s licenses, but patriarchal attitudes in the country have prevented many from actively obtaining them. The country has historically imposed severe restrictions on women’s mobility, including a bicycle ban (See: https://www.dailynk.com/english/women-on-bicycles-banned-again/) from the mid-1990s to 2012 that was justified by authorities as protecting “socialist morals.” These restrictions reflect the deeply patriarchal nature of North Korean society, where women’s freedom of movement has been tightly controlled by the state as part of broader efforts to maintain traditional gender roles and social order. The general state of women’s rights in North Korea was captured in a recent survey conducted by Daily NK, summarized here: https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/the-dire-state-of-womens-rights-in-north-korea/.
- [3]
Articles 58 and 59 of North Korean civil law stipulate the right of individuals to own “various household goods and passenger cars.” In other words, legally speaking, vehicle registration under individual names is permitted. Meanwhile, Article 43 of the Road Traffic Law (Documentation of Source of Vehicle or Vehicle Parts Purchase) states that when registering a vehicle or modifying the vehicle’s structure and re-registering, there must be documentation of the source from which the vehicle or vehicle parts were supplied or purchased.
- [4]
“No. 10 checkpoints” refer to border control posts directly operated by North Korea’s Ministry of State Security to restrict inter-provincial travel. The “No. 10” designation is part of an internal security classification system. These are essentially military and security control points designed to prevent illegal movement of people, smuggling, defection attempts, and the infiltration of outside information.
- [5]
In general, companies involved in foreign currency earning or those affiliated with party, military or government institutions either bribe or use connections (kwangye) to allow their vehicles to move about freely.