Pyongyang: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a construction plan to expand the capital, Pyongyang, eastward, vowing to refurbish dilapidated suburban areas, state media reported Monday.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Kim announced the plan in his speech during a groundbreaking ceremony the previous day for the construction of 10,000 flats in Pyongyang's Hwasong area. This initiative is part of his broader five-year development plan, unveiled in 2021, which aims to build 50,000 housing units in the city.
Delivering the speech, Kim said his country will pursue a construction plan to expand the capital's roads eastward toward Kangdong County after completing the Hwasong construction project, the report said. Kangdong is a suburban county east of Pyongyang.
Under the plan, a cluster of science research centers, schools, and modern housing units will be established in Hwasong and nearby areas, creating another science and culture district within the city, while dilapidated regions in and around the capital area will be refurbished.
Kim noted that the construction plan will be presented at a meeting of the Workers' Party of Korea scheduled for 2026 to be adopted as a major policy project. The leader also stressed progress on his five-year construction plan, saying that the latest 10,000-unit project would bring the plan to its final stage.
Under the five-year plan unveiled in 2021, Kim pledged to build 10,000 housing units every year. Since then, the first batch of 10,000 apartments was built that year in the capital's newly developed Songsin and Songhwa areas, near the northeastern Hwasong district, while 30,000 more have been nearly completed in Hwasong between 2022-2024.