North Korea has restarted activity at an unfinished east coast naval base slated to be the home of new warships and submarines, according to NK Pro analysis of satellite imagery, after over a decade of problematic construction efforts.

Planet Labs imagery suggests construction workers started to establish a camp at the site at Tapchon Bay in Munchon between Aug. 6 and 9, likely ahead of building a long-planned administrative complex and training facilities.

An expansive quay was already built between 2015 and 2017, featuring over a dozen piers and slipways for mooring large ships and submarines. The large Koam-Tapchon rail bridge was built by 2018 to connect the base with the country’s rail network, but the project overall was placed on extended hold soon after.

New imagery also shows construction along the water’s edge of Sokjon Bay immediately to the west of Tapchon, with a new road and even a small bridge built since mid-May to link up with the base.

The size and function of the base may also be slated to expand, with new roads and other construction preparation starting in July on a peninsula across the Tapchon Bay to the south.

DPRK leader Kim Jong Un publicly visited the unfinished project site in Sept. 2024, calling the establishment of a major naval base at Munchon an “urgent” task. 

At the time, he praised the “geopolitical advantage” of its location, calling it a strategic vantage point” that will help in “evolving the naval forces into a strong military organization that can respond quickly to the regional security environment.” 

He later claimed he wants the navy to establish a “blue-water” fleet that regularly sails far from the North’s territorial waters and conducts demonstrations near enemy ports.

He first visited the Tapchon site in 2013, when state media said the area belonged to Korean People’s Army (KPA) Navy Unit 291.

Kim pushed a separate modernization project in 2024 at a naval base further south in Munchon belonging to KPA Navy Unit 155, but construction there has also stalled and appeared largely inactive as of early August.

Kim has instead put naval spending in recent years toward building new destroyers on both coasts and what Pyongyang claims is a nuclear-powered submarine, leaving the base construction to languish until now.

North Korea claimed to have officially deployed a new destroyer, the No. 51 Choe Hyon, at a ceremony in late June, but that warship is located on the west coast, where construction of a modern base does not appear to have started yet.

As of Sunday, the ship remained docked at the civilian cargo port in Nampho, where the deployment ceremony took place, NK Pro has found.

Kim said at that ceremony he was “worried” that the navy has “no base to moor such large warships” as the destroyers, appearing to refer generally to both coasts. He also said he thought there was “no need” to start building such a base until that day, despite kicking off the Munchon project years earlier.

North Korea’s new destroyer on the east coast, the No. 52 Kang Kon, has been stationed at Rason Port in the northeast since June, following a series of navigation and missile tests. The DPRK leader previously said it should be deployed sometime in “the middle” of this year.

It’s unclear how many more 5,000-ton destroyers North Korea plans to commission, as Kim turned his focus to demanding construction of 10,000-ton cruisers in June.

Edited by David Choi