Tokchon residents pay 6,000–8,000 won for daily shipments of drinking and mineral water as aging infrastructure and pollution drive year-round demand beyond traditional monsoon season use.
A source in South Pyongan province told Daily NK recently that demand is on the rise for water delivery services, which had originally been used by a small number of people.
In the city of Tokchon, more people are paying 6,000–8,000 North Korean won ($0.85–$1.10) to receive a daily shipment of 10 liters of drinking water and 1–3 liters of mineral water and milk at 10 a.m.
Tokchon residents reportedly generally have drinking water delivered from a stream in the Samtan neighborhood and can choose from Muchang, Sinsong or Punggok villages for their mineral water depending on their preferred flavor.
In the past, people generally had water delivered when water sources got muddy in the monsoon season or when aging water mains burst in the winter. But more recently, North Koreans have been paying more attention to the quality of their drinking water, the source said, leading more people to become regular users of water delivery services regardless of the season.
“Whenever it rains, muddy overflow pollutes water sources, and in the winter, the water supply is often disrupted when old pipes burst. For those reasons, most people had been drawing water from local streams and boiling it to make it potable. But nowadays, it is becoming common to have good-quality water delivered to one’s home,” the source said.
Suppliers professionalize operations as cold weather drives demand
As the weather grows cold, demand for water delivery is growing.
“Water delivery spares people the hassle of breaking the ice and bringing back water when it’s cold out, and it’s not that expensive either. So aside from those who are really hard up, people prefer to have their water delivered,” the source said.
Amid the growing demand for water delivery services, suppliers are clearly becoming more professional. Trusted water delivery services with years of experience are farming out water procurement and delivery tasks as they expand their customer base.
“The delivery services are gradually becoming more organized. Suppliers bring water from several sources to a catchment site where it’s divided into individual orders and taken to customers’ houses by delivery workers,” the source said.
As demand increases, new companies are offering their services. But given the ease of misrepresenting the water source, North Koreans tend to stick with trusted businesses even if they are more expensive than newcomers using lower prices to win new customers.
“In Tokchon, rumors were circulating about a business that was mixing tap water with water from a nearby spring and trying to pass it off as mineral water from a distant source. Since then, locals have been cautioning each other against going with the cheapest option when having water delivered,” the source said.
“For reasons of that sort, locals basically prefer businesspeople who have established their trust through long service. They regard the commitment to bringing people their requested water day in and day out as the basic attribute required in this line of work.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: dailynk.com
