A New York City-based pro-North Korea nonprofit is promoting the authoritarian state as a model for affordable housing, drawing mockery and pushback — even from some of its own followers.

Nodutdol, a Midtown-based organization, posted on April 1 that North Korea offers free housing alongside images of modern apartment buildings and children playing in the snow. “Is your rent due? Not in North Korea,” the post read, slamming U.S. capitalism for “manufacturing a housing crisis at home” and holding up socialist countries as proof that things “don’t have to be this way.”

The reality of North Korean housing is considerably grimmer. Human Rights Watch has found that the government “systematically violates the right to adequate standard of living.” Housing is built by the state and allocated based on job, status, and loyalty to the regime. Construction is frequently rushed for political optics, leaving residents in unfinished or unsafe buildings. A 23-story apartment block collapsed in Pyongyang in 2014, killing more than 160 people. Ordinary citizens often end up in decrepit homes without electricity, while military and party loyalists receive preferential treatment — including luxury units granted to favored regime figures.

The post drew skepticism even within Nodutdol’s own audience. “I’m really trying to support this platform… but there is some clear misinformation going on,” one Instagram commenter wrote. Others appeared to take the bait: “Me crying as I pay my rent,” lamented another.

Nodutdol operates out of the People’s Forum on West 37th Street in Midtown Manhattan and has close ties to organizations linked to Chinese influence operations in a State Department report to Congress, including Code Pink, the nonprofit associated with tech millionaire Neville Roy Singham. The group’s stated goals include ending the U.S.-South Korea military alliance and reunifying the Korean peninsula — and it has worked, according to critics, to draw American leftists toward sympathy with Pyongyang through shared opposition to what it calls U.S. imperialism.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)