North Korea may be preparing to open Kim Jong Un’s premier Pyongyang hospital project months after it missed its deadline and was indefinitely delayed, according to NK Pro analysis of satellite imagery.

As of late January, 18 clusters of apparent construction worker barracks or storage units were visible up the road from the Pyongyang General Hospital. But nearly all of these clusters were removed by Feb. 17, Planet Labs medium-resolution satellite imagery shows.

Kim Jong Un first ordered the Pyongyang General Hospital to be built in under seven months starting in March 2020, with its opening date slated for an Oct. 10 North Korean holiday that celebrates the founding anniversary of the country’s ruling party. State media last mentioned the hospital in late Jan. 2021, when the Rodong Sinmun reported that work was “continuing to be actively pushed forward.” 

The workers’ camp that now appears to have been removed was rapidly built in early March 2020 — just days before the hospital project was officially announced — in an empty area on the shore of the Taedong River, just up the road from the construction site. The same area was also used as a workers’ camp during other major construction projects in the Taedonggang district between 2012 and 2018.

Last November, state media images suggested that North Korea is planning to build a large, new university campus in the same spot where the hospital project’s temporary workers’ camp was recently removed. 

North Korea historically built similar temporary workers’ camps just before starting construction on other projects, and these camps were typically removed days or weeks before a project finishes or officially opens. That was the case for the sprawling, luxurious Kumsusan Guesthouse built for Chinese President Xi Jinping before he arrived in Pyongyang in 2019, for example.

However, there are exceptions to this historical trend: For instance, a large area of similar structures was cleared from the Wonsan-Kalma beach resort project’s base camp in spring 2020, but the project remains indefinitely stalled and the majority of the base camp still appears intact. 

Even when a workers’ base camp is completely erased and construction appears finished, a project may still stall for years without officially opening. This is the case for a giant, mysterious new science and technology-related campus next to Kim Il Sung University that appeared finished in mid-2018. The campus still hasn’t been acknowledged by state media.

While the Pyongyang General Hospital’s exterior appeared to be finished as of late 2020, the ongoing delay to its opening could be due to an unfinished interior. Last fall, NK News reviewed North Korean documents that suggest DPRK diplomats stationed abroad were seeking millions of dollars worth of topline foreign medical equipment for the hospital — a goal that was likely to run into trouble because of COVID-19 and sanctions-related shipping holdups.  

Edited by Kelly Kasulis