Chagang Province
According to rough estimates, at the beginning of the 2000s, it was believed that the military-industrial complex of the DPRK included about 1,800 enterprises. To minimize damage during the war, most of the facilities are located in Chagan province and other remote hinterlands of the country. To hide their true purpose, in order to disguise, shelters were built near military factories and factories.
Chagang Province [aka "Cijiang Road"]is the only province of North Korea which is completely inaccessible to tourists, however in 2019 Manpo became accessible to tourist. One reason it was not believed to be accessible to tourist was due to the province being known for its weapons and nuclear weapon facilities and factories located within the province. The city of Manpo in Chagang Province is now open to tourists as of April 2019. Manpo is a large city of over 100,000 people, standing on the banks of the Yalu River opposite the Chinese city of Ji’an in Jilin Province. It is located in Chagang Province, which was the only province previously inaccessible to foreign tourists. Industry includes mainly hydroelectric power plants, mechanical processing industry, mining and forest logging.
Among them, the Huichon Machine Tool Plant is called a "mother plant" where "machines beget machine tools." Lathes, milling machines, drilling machines and grinders produced in the plant are highly acclaimed in foreign countries. The majority of North Korea's underground military industrial facilities are located in Chagang Province. Heecheon Machine Tool Factory, which is the largest machine tool production base in North Korea, is the'mother factory of the machine industry', accounting for less than 10% of the North Korean machine tool production output.
North Korea regarded the machinery industry as the heart of the industry, and concentrated its capabilities on the construction of the heavy industry as its core. During the post-war three years, the Heecheon Machine Tool Factory, Heecheon Precision Machine Factory, the Mining Machine Factory, the Agricultural Machinery Factory, and the shipyard were built to provide accessories and equipment to the economic sector.
In North Korea, the machine tool factory is called the'mother's factory' of the machine industry. Prior to liberation, Japan had few mechanical and industrial facilities in North Korea due to the colonial policy restricting secondary processing plants. From this, North Korea has made great efforts to foster the machine tool industry that can guarantee the production of machine facilities in Korea. The interest in machine tools was high enough to build the Heecheon Machine Tool Factory during the war, and the foundation of the machine industry was laid with the aid of socialist countries in the post-war past.
The machine tool industry in North Korea was stagnant until the 1980s, but in 1995, the Heecheon Machine Tool Factory developed the first numerical control (NC) machine tool capable of processing products with complex structures, and it became active. In the 2000s, machine tool factories such as Guseong and Heecheon developed computer-controlled machine tools and introduced them to the field, focusing on modernization for many years. The machine tool process is CNC-ized with funds obtained from exporting new products developed. Currently, major factories that produce machine tools include Heecheon-nyeon Hagi General Plant, Guseong Machine Tool Plant, Mangyeongdae Machine Tool Plant, Hamheung-Cheongjin Machine Tool Plant, Pyongyang Machine Tool Plant, and Sinuiju Machinery Plant.
Before Korea was liberated from Japan's colonial rule on Aug. 15, 1945, nearly 50 % of the local population was fire-field farmers. During the days of Japan's colonial rule of Korea, the province fell victim to Japan's resource expropriation. Japan set up the "Forest Administration Office of the Government General of Korea," and plundered forestry resources in the area. Later, a total of four administration offices were established, and some 20 "forestry reservation areas" were designated where forestry resources were thoroughly plundered.
In the name of "Development of Underground Resource in North Korea," Japan also deprived mineral resources of the area, including copper, granite and zinc, which were materials necessary for Japan's munitions industry. At that time, there were a timber mill, a brewery and two mines in the area, whose industrial output accounted for a mere 0.6 % of the total of northern half of the Peninsula then.
After the liberation of Korea from Japan's colonial rule, electric power, machine, technology, agricultural and light industries were developed, by utilizing its rich resources and geological conditions of the province. Modern technologies were introduced into mines and forestry industries. Rich river and lake water resources enabled the construction of the Changja River, Kanggye Youth and Unbong hydroelectric plants.
