User:JustinePorto/Public toilets in North Korea

Public toilets in North Korea are rare, in poor condition, tend to be squat toilets and rarely provide toilet paper. Public toilets may be found at hotels, restaurants and shops but it is generally culturally unacceptable to ask to use them. Open defecation is frowned upon and treated as amoral but happens anyway as a result of the lack of public toilets.

Public toilets
A local word for public toilets is W.C. An m is used to indicate men's and a w is used to indicate women's.

There are few public toilets in North Korea, and toilet paper is rarely provided as it tends to be scarce in the country. Those that do exist tend to be in poor condition and barely maintained. In bigger cities, public toilets can be found at hotels, restaurants and shops. Most locals would not use these, but international tourists would. Newspapers like Rodong Sinmun may be used in cities as a replacement. Toilet paper used to be more common, but it was imported from Japan and after the relationship between the two countries soured, imports dried up. In both urban and rural environments, the squat toilet is most common. Only in places serving the country's elite are Western style sit toilets found. In the countryside, public facilities are even more basic, with an outhouse that may have dried leaves to clean private areas after defecating.

Public toilets in places like army bases and barracks are also very basic, with either communal squat toilets or simple pit latrines where human excrement was collected for use as fertilizer. The collection of human feces for that purpose is central to agricultural policies, and the government sets quotas in a number of places for the amount that must be provided, including from public toilets. This can result in people stealing human feces from toilets to try to meet those quotas.

Public urination happens in Pyongyang because of the necessity as a result of the lack of public toilets. At the same time, the government tells people this behavior is unsanitary and amoral, and it contributes to making cities unclean. People who do engage in open defecation try to do so at night or when they can clearly not be seen. As a result, places like underneath bridges can be very smelly.

North Korea's Kim Jong-Un does not trust public toilets, and brings his own with him when he travels.