Grand People's Study House

Overview

The Grand People's Study House is North Korea's national library, located at Kim Il Sung Square in central Pyongyang. It serves as the national center for Juche studies, the country's official state ideology, alongside science, technology, and the arts, and functions as a correspondence university for continuing education.

History

The institution's predecessor opened as the Pyongyang City Library on November 13, 1945, shortly after Korea's liberation, and was recognized as the National Central Library the following year. Destroyed during the Korean War, it was rebuilt at the request of Kim Il Sung and reopened as the National Central Library on August 15, 1954. It was renamed the Central Library in 1973. The present building, built in a neo-traditional Korean architectural style at Kim Il Sung's insistence on a site originally proposed for government offices, was constructed over about 21 months beginning in December 1979 and opened on April 1, 1982, in part to mark Kim Il Sung's 70th birthday; it was renamed the Grand People's Study House at that time.

Collections, Holdings, and Publications

The building has ten stories, roughly 100,000 square meters of floor space, and about 600 rooms, including 21 reading rooms and 17 lecture rooms; various sources describe capacity ranging up to 30 million volumes. Historical documents relating to the Joseon Dynasty have been found in the library, alongside a music archive of folk and revolutionary songs. Materials are available in Korean, English, French, Russian, German, Chinese, and Japanese, including some foreign publications; since the 1990s the Asia Foundation's Books for Asia program has annually donated more than 10,000 books to the library and to Kim Il Sung University and Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies.

Access and Usage

Attendance at classes and lectures, as well as general library use, is free, with reported daily visitor figures cited variously between about 10,000 and 12,000. Library materials themselves are not browsable directly by visitors; patrons search print or online catalogues and place requests, which library staff retrieve. The library is connected by state network to institutions such as Kim Il Sung University and Kim Chaek University of Technology for remote/distance learning access.