Nampo - 36°43'N 125°23'E
Nampo (also spelled Nampho) city is located in South Pyongan province on the coast of the DPRK, southwest of Pyongyang. Nampo is a specially administered North Korean city due to its importance as the major port on the West Sea. Situated at the mouth of the Taedong-gang, Nampo serves as the outer harbor for Pyongyang on the Yellow Sea. The city is a center for nonferrous metallurgy; zinc and copper are among the metals smelted. Among Nampo’s other industries are machine building (including shipyards), glass, silk weaving, flour milling, and fishing.
The highway between Pyongyang and Nampo is the best in the country, which is a good indicator of its importance as the major center of trade by sea between China and the DPRK. An approximate 45 minute drive away from the capital of North Korea on the virtually empty Youth Heroes Highway leads to this bustling port city where the site of factories and Chinese joint ventures has become increasingly common in the past few years.
Nampo is a cultural and trade port city on the west coast of Korea and a west gateway to Pyongyang. Namp'o is situated approximately 50 km south west of P'yongyang, at the mouth of the Taedong River. It was originally a small fishing village, but became a port for foreign trade in 1897, developing into a modern port in 1945 after World War II. Nampo is situated approximately 50 km south west of P'yongyang, it is around a 45 minute drive away from the capital of North Korea on the virtually empty Youth Hero Motorway - a 46 km long expressway between Pyongyang and Nampo. Construction of the expressway started in November 1998 with the massive support of young Korean volunteer workers. The widest motorway in North Korea (5 lanes in each direction!) was opened in October 2000.
Nampo is a cultural and trade port city on the west coast of Korea and a west gateway to Pyongyang. Namp'o is situated at the mouth of the Taedong River. It was originally a small fishing village, but became a port for foreign trade in 1897, developing into a modern port in 1945 after World War II. The Port of Nambo by most measures is a small, regional port with outdated infrastructure. Nampo has a population of about 370,000, making it the fourth biggest city in the DPRK. Important employers are the Nampo Fishery Complex, the Nampo Smelter Complex and the Nampo Glass Corporation as well as several sea salt producing companies.
The West Sea Barrage hasn't just helped the local economy in terms of electricity, but it essentially also turned the Taedong River into a giant artificial lake, separating it from the West Sea and therefore providing fresh water for the local agriculture. As it separates the Taedong River (which leads to Pyongyang) and the West Sea, it protects the inland from floods.
Port of Nampo
The port in Nampo can accommodate ships of 20,000 tons but is frozen during the winter. Namp’o is the chief seaport in the area and is connected to the interior by rail and by river transport on the Taedong. The city is a market center for marine products, including shellfish, and its industries include steel and chemical manufacturing.
Certain ports in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in particular Nampo, are hubs for suspected illegal activity. In addition to imagery highlighting the consistent use of Nampo port for loading prohibited exports of coal from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a Member State provided the UN in 2019 with imagery demonstrating the widespread use of the Marine Import Terminal at Nampo by tankers documented as engaged in illegal ship-to-ship transfers. The imagery shows how underwater pipelines attached to offloading buoys are used to transfer fuel from vessels to the terminals in the Nampo port complex.
Blatant violations such as these can occur only with the full knowledge and cooperation of Nampo port officials. On 12 October 2018, a Member State informed the UN Panel that “there may have been a sanction violation in Singapore” relating to a scientific or technical training project between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Singapore that included a study visit to Singapore’s port by Nampo port officials. In its letter to Singapore, the Panel noted the systemic violations of the resolutions taking place at Nampo and also noted that according to a number of the Panel’s previous reports, the port was also the site for the export or import of a variety of shipping containers seized by Member States and found to be containing items from or destined for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that violated the provisions of the resolutions, including the measures aimed at stemming nuclear, ballistic missile and other arms-related materials. Singapore replied to the Panel on 4 December 2018, confirming that Kang Jong Gwan, the Minister of Land and Maritime Transport of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who oversees the country’s port, shipping and vessel operations, headed a delegation to Singapore.
Both marine import terminals in Nampo are configured to import, store, and transport refined petroleum products through an offloading pier and single point mooring systems. As can be seen in imagery, various DPRK tankers at anchorage cycle through offloading infrastructure to make individual deliveries of refined petroleum products before departing the port in search of additional, illicit STS transfer transactions.
Nampo Shipyard
Nampo is the center of the North Korean shipbuilding industry. The Nampo shipyard builds small merchant
ships, dredgers and stern trawlers, but it is also the home of a key North Korean naval shipbuilding complex. Analysts with 38North believe that the facility has been used for the testing and development of North Korea's submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Employing 7,000 workers, the facilities include drydocks, 19 cranes, various cutting machines and a 6,000-ton floating dock.
The production capacity in the North’s shipbuilding industry was 258,000 tons in 2004, about 3.1 percent that of the South’s 8.240,000 tons in the same year, according to a report from the Korea Development Bank. There are eight shipyards in North Korea, including Wonsan and Najin. Total employees in the industry were 25,000, the report showed.
In accordance with the Agreement at the First South-North Prime Ministerial Talks on Implementing the Declaration on the Advancement of South-North Korean Relations, Peace and Prosperity, the first meeting of the Joint Committee for Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation was held in Seoul from December 4 to 6, 2007. The South and the North have agreed to actively cooperate on the construction of joint shipyards in Anbyeon and Nampo and the civilian vessels use of the direct route to Haeju. The South and the North have agreed to conduct the second on-site survey starting from December 11 for the construction of a ship block plant to be built in Anbyeon and the modernization of Yongnam repair plant and the construction of a ship block plant in Nampo. The North has guaranteed to provide reference materials on electric facilities and amenities for workers who would be involved with the on-site survey.
In April 2018, as the North and South moved to reconcile their differences and reach a peace agreement, the government of South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to resurrect the plan to build shipyard capacity at Anbyeon and Nampo. On Tuesday, South Korean media confirmed that Jae-in's government is working on the joint shipyard plan. South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Ministry of Unification's Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Team are said to be reviewing options for joint projects, including the Anbyeon-Nampo shipyard venture and the development of unspecified resources.
As a repair shipyard located in Nampo, dock No. 2 was completed in March 2006, making it a representative repair shipyard in North Korea. North Korea is promoting Dock 2 as a modern large dock that can not only repair several tens of thousands of tonnes of ships at the same time, but also computerized its operation. After completion, the plant has become a major viewing course for Korean and foreign visitors. North Korea seems to have determined that the repair factory could handle the repair of not only North Korean ships, but also foreign ships, and in this regard, it was also actively engaged in cooperation with Korean companies. It is not confirmed whether there are any foreign ship repairs.
September 10 repair plant is located in Nampo City and is a factory under the Nampo Shipyard. It is a factory that specializes in repairing large cargo ships such as large refrigerated carriers, oil tankers, and water carriers. In the late 1980s, expansion work and work process improvement were promoted. The site area of ??the factory has been expanded by 2.5 times, and the work at the large dock and the work at the mooring has been converted into a flow type. In 2005, the construction of Dock No. 2 was completed. It is said that several pumps and port cranes are installed along with the sluice gate. It is said that the construction of the dock was supported by the sea port construction office. Nampo Ship Factory repaired 3 ships to be used as cargo ships for transporting raw materials at Alternative Friendship Glass Factory in 2006.
Nampo Communications Equipment Plant
The formation of telecommunications policy poses a difficult challenge for authoritarian regimes: while improvements in telecommunications can contribute to material prosperity, they may also contribute to a loss of control. North Korean policies reveal an ambivalent attitude, driven by conflicting goals of modernization and control. The Nampo Communications Equipment Plant is built on a floor space of 1.5 acres with about 3,000 employees. The plant is one of the largest communications equipment manufacturing facilities in North Korea. It manufactures televisions, radios, wireless and radar equipment. The Nampo Plant is geared to a production cpacity of 20,000 TV sets per year. It also manufactures radars sets for military use, showing clear indications of being primarily a military factory.After the surrender of the Japanese militarists the Korean Worker's Party and DPRK government adopted a course during the Second World War and especially after the three-year Korean war of the priority development of heavy industry with the simultaneous development of light industry and agriculture, taking steps to eliminate the colonial imbalance of the industrial structure and at the same time devoting attention to the development of machine building since Korea practically had no machine building of its own during the period of Japanese domination. The KWP CC and DPRK government have examined and are examining the machine building industry as one of the main elements in the construction of the basis of socialist industrialization and have exerted much effort to create and develop a Korean machine building industry.
