Kim Jong Un continues to expand the number of coastal areas undergoing land reclamation, with a new 3,266-hectare project at the Kwangtan River (광탄천) estuary in Taedong Bay, west of the town of Taetan, South Hwanghae Province.
Beginning in 2025, this previously unreported-on project will connect with smaller existing land reclamation sites in the area and will eliminate nearly the whole Kwangtanchon estuary, creating a combined area of artificial land almost 14 km wide from east to west.
Land reclamation on the Korean Peninsula has been extensive, with the earliest projects predating the division of Korea. Following the establishment of the DPRK, the government of North Korea has embarked on numerous reclamation projects, with the Sixth Central Committee meeting of the Workers' Party of Korea in 1981 ultimately envisioning 3,000 square kilometers of reclaimed land, primarily on the country's west coast; a goal that Kim Jong Un has taken claim to as well.
An AccessDPRK examination of ongoing and completed land reclamation in North Korea shows that by 2023, approximately 1,049 square kilometers of land had either been reclaimed or was subject to ongoing projects. By 2026, that figure grew to over 1,100 sq. km.
The Kwangtanchon project is comprised of six new basins that have been enclosed by nearly 34 km of seawalls (approximately 5 meters high), that are being built in and around 10 smaller plots that were constructed in previous decades. The new seawalls enclose an area of 32.6 square kilometers. And when including the existing reclamation basins, the total reclaimed area within the estuary will reach 42 square kilometers
The scale of Kwangtanchon suggests that each new basin will be reclaimed by slowly draining the area and then allowing sediment to gradually fill in the basins, while local laborers subdivide and level the ground systematically over a period of years.
This will produce plots of land that still remain below or very near sea level even after reclamation (instead of infilling and raising the land by adding large amounts of rock and soil), and so the new agricultural land that is made available will continue to rely on the seawalls for protection against flooding.
The seawalls for each area are constructed from rocks quarried nearby (usually by leveling small hills), and they are being fitted with tidal dams/gates to allow the flow of water in and out of each new basin. This will maintain the tideland ecosystem (and the food it provides) over the period of the project's life, until the basins have been reclaimed.
In the end, however, North Korea is making the choice to lose tidal and riverine food sources in exchange for new rice growing land; a trade that causes tremendous ecological disturbances and may be wholly unnecessary to improve the food supply. As Bernhard Seliger of the Hanns Seidel Foundation told NK Pro, "it would be much easier and more feasible and better to allocate resources and labor in a different way" to increase food production. However, Kim Il Sung's legacy of mega reclamation projects looms large.
As a result, with the addition of the Kwangtanchon project and others currently under construction, the majority of North Korea's west coast tidal flats and marshes are under critical threat. And the only way to achieve the goal of reclaiming 3,000 square kilometers would be through the eventual destruction of nearly the entire west coast intertidal zone.
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