Ask a North Korean: what was life like on the construction sites at Samjiyon? | NK News
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September 18, 2026Sep 18, 2026

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Ask a North Korean: what was life like on the construction sites at Samjiyon?

"It keeps me up at night when I think about those hungry children struggling in the cold"

Greetings all, and welcome back to Ask a North Korean: the feature where you, the NK News readers, email in with your questions to be answered by our very own defector writers.

Today, we take a look at the construction at Samjiyon, a city in the very north of North Korea.

Samjiyon is a symbolically-significant city since, according to North Korea, it is “the glorious land housing Paektusan Secret Camp where [former DPRK leader and Kim Jong Un’s father] Chairman Kim Jong Il’s birthplace is located.”

The efforts to reconstruct the town have been toutedby leader Kim Jong Un