North Korea orders 400 housing units built in North Hamgyong in a single month
North Korea is pushing a sweeping housing construction drive across the country under the banner of “regional development,” and central party officials traveled to North Hamgyong province earlier this month to enforce the campaign’s targets with unusual intensity. A source in North
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Workers at a housing construction site in North Pyongan province. / Photo: Daily NK
North Korea is pushing a sweeping housingconstruction drive across the country under the banner of “regional development,” and central partyofficials traveled to North Hamgyong province earlier this month to enforce the campaign’s targets with unusual intensity.
A source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK on Friday that an enlarged executive committee meeting of the provincial party was held March 3 and 4 in a tense atmosphere, with three officials dispatched from the central Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang in attendance.
According to the source, the meeting was focused on reviewing local construction progress and translating the Ninth WPK Party Congress’s housing targets into concrete 2026 plans and first-half-year tasks for the province.
The central party officials reviewed construction status reports and heard briefings from local cadres before sharply rebuking the provincial leadership. The source said the meeting was marked by sustained tension throughout.
Provincial officials were particularly rattled when specific construction targets and implementation methods not previously made public were disclosed at the meeting, prompting what the source described as stern questioning and visible unease among those present.
400 units ordered in a single month
The central party officials handed down an order requiring all cities and counties in North Hamgyong province to complete construction of 400 housing units within March alone.
The officials repeatedly stressed that the current housing construction targets surpass those of the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il eras, describing the campaign as “an unprecedented housing supply revolution for regional development in the history of the republic.”
One official in attendance declared that “this undertaking is not a simple construction project but the first political test of establishing the authority of the Ninth Party Congress,” adding that all party and administrative organs in the province must fulfill the targets unconditionally.
The same official warned that the plans adopted represent “an absolute order of the party” and that any unit falling behind on material supply or labormobilization would face party and legal accountability.
The source said that, if the Eighth WPK Congress held in January 2021 centered on constructing 50,000 housing units in Pyongyang, the Ninth Party Congress has made simultaneous renovation of cities and counties across the entire country its defining ambition, with the aim of proving in concrete terms that “an era in which the regions change” has arrived.
The Rodong Sinmun reported during the Ninth Party Congress that Kim Jong Un’s report to the congress outlined tasks and methods “to further accelerate regional development and rural construction during the new five-year plan period, to reshape the regions and rural areas anew each year, and to bring about greater transformation in the material and cultural life of the people nationwide.”
Following the meeting, North Hamgyong province issued a general mobilization order and began organizing the concentration of materials and labor at housing construction sites.
Provincial, city, and county party and administrative officials have been visiting construction sites directly. The source said a palpable sense of pressure and strain among those officials was clearly evident.
“Among some cadres, there is grumbling,” the source said. “They are being told to push through massive construction and fulfill it unconditionally, but where are the materials supposed to come from? And if everyone is mobilized as labor, how are ordinary people supposed to earn money and feed themselves?”
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