With little fanfare, Pyongyang began work on a new coal-fired power plant located in the village of Samdung, Kangdong (39.002934° 126.159251°) in early 2011. However, despite some initial progress, work shuddered to a halt and the plant became one of many of North Korea's abandoned projects that litter the landscape.
In this article I will examine the history of the site and its eventual fate, hopefully serving as a modest ode to this nearly forgotten chapter in Pyongyang's attempt to solve its energy woes.
The plant, with an estimated capacity of 300 MW, would go a long way toward relieving Pyongyang's energy shortages and help to power industrial sites around the region. It would have also been the first new grid-scale thermal power plant constructed in North Korea since the East Pyongyang Thermal Power Plant came online in 1994.
However, despite the possible rewards of building a new power plant, there wasn't much public reporting on the project or its progress, and none within official DPRK media.
Satellite imagery shows that by March 31, 2011, initial preparatory work had begun on the 25.4-hectare (62.2 acres) site and that foundations for the future switchyard were being built. Construction progressed quickly at first and by October 29, 2011, foundation work for the boilers, cooling tower, and worker's housing was all underway.
Work was also underway to provide a dedicated rail link to the plant to bring coal from nearby coal mines, but the tracks were never laid.
There is then a gap in the imagery but by October 1, 2013, four worker's apartment buildings were externally completed (with foundations for a further six being created), the cooling tower structure had begun to rise, the main smokestack was completed, the switchyard was largely finished, and work on at least 17 other core structures had been carried out.
Unfortunately, the 2012-13 window appears to be where North Korea began encountering major problems with the Kangdong power plant.
Following the collapse of the Communist Bloc, North Korea has struggled to import complex industrial equipment and hasn't been able to purchase things ranging from fuel oil to rice at the 'friendship prices' it had been accustomed to. Even as late as the early 2010s, North Korea's economy was still largely stagnant in the wake of famine and economic isolation. And the country's industrial base was not known to have the ability to domestically manufacture things like large turbines for electricity generation. Indeed, even in 2015-2017, the country had to rely on Chinese assistance for the successful expansion of the Bukchang Thermal Power Plant.
Building a completely new power plant would come with an even greater level of complexity and need.
Work came to halt by the end of 2013 and imagery from Oct. 5, 2015 showed little additional progress. Imagery from the following years show small changes, such as construction materials being occasionally moved around the site, but progress was stagnant until 2020.
Then, on Nov. 9, 2020, imagery appeared showed that work was resuming, with new progress being made on the two boiler buildings (still sans boilers, but progress nonetheless). The next image isn't until a year later, on Dec. 2, 2021, but that showed that work on the boiler buildings had advanced.
Despite that brief flash of activity, Kangdong would never be completed.
The reason for this isn't known. Maybe it was COVID, maybe it was turning out to be too technically difficult, or maybe authorities decided to abandon the Kangdong project in favor of expanding the East Pyongyang Thermal Plant and relying on a series of hydroelectric projects that have been completed in the years since 2011.
Regardless of reason, no more construction would be carried out and in April-June 2024, the site was demolished. The demolition process was caught by NK watcher @NobodyGerman who operates an anonymous account on Twitter. (Go follow the account, they find a lot of interesting things.)
The four apartment blocks still stand and may or may not be occupied, and the facility's switchyard also remains (likely serving as a substation for lines from Bukchang into Pyongyang). But the rest of the site has been covered over and is now being used as farmland.
And so, with even less fanfare than when it began, Kangdong vanished. In fact, @NobodyGerman's post about its demolition is the only mention of its fate that I'm aware of. But hopefully, though it may be gone, this article can help serve as the memory of the little power plant that coulda, woulda, couldn't.
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