Mick Hartley

As we've seen, one of Supreme Commander Kim Jong-un's main current preoccupations is to develop and promote the Wonsan-Kalma Shore Tourist Zone in North Korea's Samjiyon County, thereby earning some desperately needed foreign currency. He even featured it in his 2019 New Year's address:

The whole Party, the entire army and all the people should turn out to transform Samjiyon County into a model of modern mountainous city, an ideal socialist village, and complete on the highest possible level the construction projects that would represent the present era, including the Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist area and other new tourist areas. It is important to steadily improve architectural designing and construction methods, and ensure domestic production and better quality of finishing materials, so as to build all the architectural structures magnificently and in our own style and provide our people with a cultured, happy life. With the national-level construction projects underway on an extensive scale, we should build up the capacity of producing cement and other building materials as planned.

[The address is long, and stupendously dull…

The whole country should render active ideological and spiritual, material and technical assistance to coal mines, and the state should take stringent steps to provide in a responsible manner facilities and materials needed for coal production and good living conditions for coal miners.

A greater development should be achieved in establishing the Juche orientation in the metallurgical and chemical industries, the two pillars in economic construction.

The metallurgical industry should lower production cost to the minimum by perfecting the scientific and technological aspects of the Juche-oriented iron- and steel-making processes and ensuring their normal operation, and work out and implement an operations plan for providing them with full amounts of iron ore, refractories and ferro-alloys to meet their increased production capacity.

The chemical industry should step up the building of the phosphatic fertilizer factory and the establishment of the C1 chemical industry, develop the glauberite and synthetic fibre industries and convert the existing equipment and technical processes into energy-saving and labour-saving ones. This year a nationwide effort should be made to run the chemical fertilizer factories at full capacity and boost production at the February 8 Vinalon Complex…..

And so on…and on. The populace have, nevertheless, been instructed to "fully acquaint themselves" with it all in their spare time.]

According to the Daily NK, the new building work in Samjiyon County is seen as an excellent opportunity to promote the idolization of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Amongst other details, the roof shapes should echo the immortal Kimsungilia and Kimjongilia flowers, which have mythic resonance in the Kim cult:

Samjiyeon County is being developed as a tourist site together with Wonsan in Kangwon Province. The authorities claim that because the area is the “hometown of the Great General [Kim Jong Il],” it is an ideal location for the state to promote Kim Jong Un’s Paektu bloodline and the regime. Kim Jong Un has expressed continued interest in the area (visiting three times last year) and has continued to check up on the progress of development….

The regime has consequently mobilized construction brigades in the area. Provincial shock troop units (with brigades consisting of around 2,000 personnel each, as well as municipal and county organizations, and companies consisting of 100 people each) are participating in the construction. Up to 80% of the 30,000 residents in Samjiyon County are thought to be involved in the construction projects.

Each shock troop unit mobilized in the construction projects has been working continuously in the blistering cold over periods stretching from one to three months. Deaths and injuries due to these conditions have continued to occur and some have had to return to their home provinces.

Kim Jong Un ordered the reconstruction and expansion of apartments in Samjiyon County to be completed by October 10, 2020 (the day commemorating the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea). The speed at which the construction is progressing has led to concerns ranging from construction accidents to structural issues.

“There may be problems relating to the safety of the apartments due to poor workmanship. The construction workers have sold construction materials (steel poles, cement, wood, etc.) to buy food to eat, so there’s likely issues with the quality of concrete being used in the buildings,” a separate source in Ryanggang Province reported.

“The walls are also in poor condition because heating hasn’t been applied properly in the buildings. The basics of sound construction aren’t being followed, so there are places in the apartments that have started to crack. There are apartment buildings currently undergoing safety checks, which has forced construction to stop in some cases.”

The issue of construction worker safety is also a major concern. A total of 67 workers from Nampo were killed or severely injured in March 2018 when a 15-ton truck they were riding in overturned near Pochon on its way to Samjiyon County.

Many workers have died after being hit by flying debris from dynamite blasts, and such incidents largely occur due to the lack of safety precautions taken by the authorities. Sources in South Hwanghae Province reported that a female worker in her early twenties who ran away from her shock troop brigade was found dead on the side of a road.

Workers suffer from immense hardships due to the long hours demanded by construction managers. They typically work from 8 am to 7 pm with a 30-minute lunch break, but many are also required to work until 1 am to 2 am after their one-hour dinner break.

“When they’re exhausted, the workers fall and hurt themselves and their managers scold them for not paying attention,” said a separate source in Ryanggang Province

“I heard that many people ran away from the work teams but ended up wandering around for 5-6 months before reaching home.”

The tourists they'll be hoping to lure here will, in the main, be Chinese. But the message from all this should be clear enough…Don't go there!