The Hwangju-Kindung Waterway was officially declared operational in December 2023. This new gravity-fed waterway system aims to provide a constant, uninterrupted water supply to the Hwangju-Kindung Plain for crop irrigation. It will reduce the region’s dependence on electrical pump stations that require constant electricity supply.

Completion of the Hwangju-Kindung Waterway was also noted as fulfilling North Korea’’ rural development and irrigation construction goals set at the Eighth Party Congress. Whether the new waterway will work as designed remains to be seen, as the system has yet to be tested during the extremes of the country’s wet and dry seasons.

Of North Korea’s 46,541 square miles, approximately 80 percent of the land mass is mountainous or tablelands, leaving the remaining 20 percent suitable for agriculture. Climatically, summer tends to be hot, humid and rainy. Winters, particularly in the mountains, alternate between clear, dry weather and heavy snows when the moist sea air freezes. 

As discussed previously, North Korean diets are generally plant-heavy, even amid efforts to expand protein farming. In both cases, optimizing conditions for both protein and agriculture is necessary to maintain food supply. 

While the land is rich in mineral sources, only the lowlands—principally on the country’s west coast—are suited for agriculture. These farmlands must be carefully managed given North Korea’s relatively short growing season, which can be plagued either with excess rain or drought. Land reclamation efforts have been used to help increase crop production and ensure the existing lowlands receive the right amount of water through a system of irrigation canals, including the coastal, rice-producing lands and areas further inland that might otherwise suffer through seasonal wet and dry conditions. 

To ensure steady sources of water, North Korea has constructed numerous reservoirs at higher elevations, capturing snowmelt and water runoff during the rainy season. As water is gradually released from these reservoirs, it feeds into streams and rivers down to the lowlands, where water is diverted into crop fields via a network of canals and pumping stations. There are approximately 20 of these canal waterway networks of differing lengths. The majority of these waterways are located in the west and southwest provinces, while a handful are principally tunnel waterways located in the higher elevations of the north and northeast of the country. The latter originate from mountain reservoirs in the west, thus indirectly supporting the network of waterways there. Others flow to the east, feeding into other reservoirs or directly into rivers from which water is drawn for irrigation of the smaller crop fields located along the east coast. The latter rivers tend to dry up during the dry seasons. The tunnel waterways are intended to provide a more constant supply of water to meet agricultural needs. 

The use of pumping stations, however, brings about an additional challenge—namely, a lack of consistent electricity supply. In a creative effort to ease this challenge, North Korea has undertaken an effort to utilize more “gravity-fed” waterways to channel water to the agricultural regions, reducing the need for electrical equipment. 

The largest of these efforts began in South Hwanghae Province in January 2012 and was completed in May 2020. According to state media, this is “the largest gravity-fed irrigation network,” spanning “well over a hundred kilometers” and able to “supply enough irrigation water to tens of thousands of hectares of farmland.” Coverage of this project emphasized that this network uses minimal electric power and pumping equipment while still being able to supply enough irrigation water to ensure stable yields, prevent drought and flooding, develop fish farming, and “provide people with a pleasant cultural recreation environment.”

While the initiative in South Hwanghae Province is touted as the largest of these systems, most recently, North Korean attention has turned to the Hwangju Kindung Waterway, located approximately 35 kilometers south of Pyongyang.

Read the full article on Tearline.