The North Korean authorities recently issued an order to mobilize Pyongyang residents to accelerate the completion of a new street in the city’s Sopho area, Daily NK has learned.
The authorities believe they cannot complete work on a new street in the Sopho area by the set deadline, and the order was handed down to accelerate the current snail’s pace of the project, a reporting partner in Pyongyang told Daily NK last Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
Previously, the authorities had conducted an in-depth analysis of the progress made on first-quarter plans for the construction of the new street. Believing the currently deployed labor brigades would not be able to complete the construction by the deadline, the authorities began implementing measures to speed up the construction work.
The general construction headquarters sent layout plans for the construction site to on-site construction command units to divide up the construction work into sections, zones, divisions, and blocks, ordering all Pyongyang residents to support the construction efforts without any exceptions.
Since Apr. 18, Pyongyangites have been working at the Sopho construction site at night while continuing their daily activities at home or at work during the day, the reporting partner said.
“Telling everyone who lives in Pyongyang that they must take part in the construction, the authorities are pushing officials at agencies and enterprises, laborers and Socialist Women’s Union of Korea members, and even students to the construction site,” he said. “They so meticulously assigned tasks per section of responsibility that there’s no holes to escape though, given that they have planned things down to the smallest work unit.”
To ensure that people can get to and from the construction site in Sopho, the authorities have ordered 24-hour operations of the Sopho-Sopyongyang trolley, whose service had previously stopped at 11 PM, as well as city buses and other forms of transportation.
In so doing, the authorities emphasized that it is “irresponsible to delay or miss one’s original tasks just because of nighttime construction work,” and that people “must carry out both construction work and their revolutionary tasks,” the reporting partner said.
“The government is demanding that construction be completed within the deadline using all means and methods available. The state is providing just 60% of the supplies, with the rest to be supplied by each work unit. If work units lack the supplies, they must gather money from people to purchase them. The authorities have ignited competition between work units.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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