This article is part two in a series about progress on major construction projects around North Korea in 2021. Part one covered developments in Pyongyang.

North Korea has made significant progress this year on a top-priority project to transform a “backward” mining town in the country’s northeast, as workers appear set to meet their deadline to build 5,000 homes in the area.

Over 150 small apartment buildings have sprouted up along Komdok’s narrow river valley since April, part of a plan to rebuild and modernize the remote but resource-rich mining region. Some finishing touches such as the installation of colorful roofing began to appear by late October, according to NK News analysis of Planet Labs satellite imagery.

DPRK leader Kim Jong Un initially called for 25,000 homes to be built in the Komdok area by 2025, when he visited after major flooding late last year and called out the region’s “centuries-old backwardness.” 

State TV clarified in coverage of a major party plenum in June that these plans would be fulfilled by constructing 5,000 homes each year for five years, meaning the first deadline is coming up at the end of this month.

“The workers of Komdok are like the elder brother of the country [and] the Komdok area is the major artery of the national economy,” Kim reportedly said during his Oct. 2020 visit, adding that it should be transformed into “the country’s model mountainous city.”

He also described the region, located in the northeast near Tanchon City, as “the country’s leading large-scale mineral production base,” and state media has long said it contains extensive deposits of magnesite ore and high-grade zinc and lead.

CONSTRUCTION PROGRESS

The Komdok river valley north of Kumgol Youth Railway Station has seen the most substantial transformation during this year’s construction push, with hundreds of old homes demolished and replaced with apartment buildings. 

Satellite imagery shows that workers installed roofing on most of these new buildings, as well as dozens more further north in a village near the Taehung Youth Hero Mine, in the last week of October. 

But some other new buildings appeared to remain unfinished as of Dec. 8, calling into question the overall progress of the project. Big North Korean construction projects have missed Kim Jong Un’s initial deadlines for completion more often than not in recent years. 

The DPRK leader has not visited Komdok since Oct. 2020, but is likely to do so again as the project progresses due to its economic and political importance to him and the party. 

The most densely populated area of Komdok, around Kumgol Youth Railway Station, has yet to see substantial demolition and construction, so it is likely that hundreds of old homes on the hill above the station will be the target of future phases of the five-year project. 

Public plans so far have focused on housing construction to improve the quality of life of miners, but state media has been less clear about plans to modernize mines in order to improve production. 

Meanwhile, large-scale construction work in Komdok this year has come amid the sudden need to commit resources to reconstruction in the northeast region once again after more major flooding in August.

Edited by Arius Derr