A giant construction worker camp has appeared in recent weeks in a suburb of Pyongyang long thought to house the headquarters of the country’s military industry, likely indicating a new improvement project is underway.

NK Pro analysis of Planet Labs satellite imagery shows the new project began on and near Kangdong Airfield located northeast of the capital in the first days of January, with the camp reaching a size of around 84 acres (34 hectares) by Jan. 30.

The camp resembles others previously set up at 10,000-home skyscraper street projects in the capital and at the “world’s largest” greenhouse farm at Ryonpho on the east coast last year, and is roughly the same size as the latter.

The large size of the worker camp suggests it could be related to a “new street of 3,700 homes” that DPRK leader Kim Jong Un recently ordered as a top priority for 2023, another new greenhouse farm or some other large-scale project requiring significant resources.

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U.S. intelligence agencies and North Korea researchers have said for decades that the DPRK “Second Economic Committee (SEC)” — the government organization in charge of managing all of the country’s weapons production and foreign sales — is based in Kangdong.

Researchers have identified the location of SEC headquarters as a cluster of buildings to the northeast of Kangdong, technically in Sonchon County. This site was later confirmed as the Korean People’s Army (KPA) Strategic Forces command headquarters after a visit by Kim in 2017, and it’s unclear if the facilities are shared between the two or if the SEC is based elsewhere.

If the SEC is indeed in Kangdong, this would mean that the small northeastern suburb 18 miles (30 km) up the road from Pyongyang is home to a key group of officials whom Kim Jong Un is likely interested in treating with new homes or other luxuries.

Central Kangdong also houses a number of military factories such as the Kangdong Precision Machine Plant and Kangdong Weak Current Apparatus Factory. 

Kangdong Airfield, where the new construction project is taking place, was once a base for an elite women’s air force pilot unit that Kim Jong Un visited in March 2014. 

The airfield was upgraded with new facilities soon after, but they were mostly demolished and planes removed from the site in 2019, while some remaining skeletal structures were torn down between June and July 2022, according to Planet Labs imagery — possibly in preparation for the current project.

Korean Central News Agency and other outlets started reporting last week on a new government campaign to send young people from the provinces to Pyongyang to begin work on Kim’s newly ordered housing development, suggesting this project is likely already underway. 

NK Pro could not find any other new large construction projects in the capital after reviewing recent satellite imagery — another factor supporting Kangdong as the site of this project. 

However, Kangdong is relatively small and may not currently have a population of 3,700 families who could move into a new dense and isolated apartment complex (the airfield is around 3.7 miles or 6 km from the town center). 

This comparison demonstrates the similar size of the construction worker camps, outlined in red dotted lines, at the Ryonpho Greenhouse Farm (left) and Kangdong Airfield (right) | Images: Planet Labs, edited by NK Pro

Kim previously pushed the Unha Scientists Street project near the Academy of Defense Science in northern Pyongyang in 2013 — a group reportedly under the SEC responsible for guiding nuclear weapon and other missile development — and Wisong Scientists Street north of there in Phyongsong the following year. Both are located in more populated areas than Kangdong, but were built for just 1,000 families each.

This could point to another large greenhouse farm as another possible project in the works for the site. The Kangdong Airfield lies in a valley, and its grounds cover an area around the same size as the Jungphyong Vegetable Greenhouse Farm, which was built in 2019 and is half the size of the Ryonpho farm built last year. 

Both the Jungphyong and Ryonpho farms were also built on top of demolished air force airfields, establishing something of a pattern and suggesting the same fate could be in store for Kangdong. 

If the new Kangdong worker camp is for one of these types of large-scale projects, as its size suggests, it is likely that Kim Jong Un will inspect the construction site prior to work starting, and possibly lead a groundbreaking ceremony to be covered with great fanfare in state media.

Edited by Arius Derr