“What do you think about trying to build a vegetable greenhouse farm there?” According to North-Korean media these were the words used last year by Kim Jong Un, starting the countries biggest greenhouse project. Now satellite images show the greenhouse being constructed.
Largest facilities
Originally referred to as a spur-of-the-moment idea for a construction project by Kim Jong Un at the site of an old airfield, the Onpho Greenhouse Farm (온포온실농장) appears to be shaping up to be one of the largest facilities of its kind in the country.
It was announced in the July 17 report during Kim’s inspection of Jungphyong-ri, where the DPRK leader reportedly “clarified the long-term plan for building a huge vegetable greenhouse farm.”
A report carried in the party-run daily Rodong Sinmun on March 13 this year recalled the supposed story of how the idea for the project came about, with Kim Jong Un “suddenly” asking out loud hours after visiting the airfield: “What do you think about trying to build a vegetable greenhouse farm there?”
He said that the KPA “should build the farm at lightening speed as it is the first gigantic and large-scale construction in the country” and “stressed that it is necessary to build it at the highest level while ensuring both construction speed and quality as it is the farm to be provided by the Party with firm determination, not sparing the investment for the people in North Hamgyo’ng Province.” He “called for building the farmers’ residential area and cultural and welfare establishments in a modern and civilized way and thus successfully sprucing up the farm village as a model of socialist rural cultural construction and socialist paradise in which it is nice to live and work.”
Now, the farm has taken shape in a roughly 2.7-square-kilometer area spanning the land between Kyongsong and the East Sea – an area larger than the new Wonsan-Kalma Tourist Zone.
Construction began in August, high-resolution satellite imagery provided by Google Earth show, with the appearance by September 12 of around 100 temporary structures on the razed grounds of the old airfield and demolition beginning on the adjacent village.