North Korea is extracting sand from the lower Taedong River for state construction projects, with some being smuggled into China, according to an anonymous source in Pyongyang who spoke to The Daily NK on Aug. 30.
North Korea’s major construction projects in Pyongyang and other cities are driving up demand for sand, a crucial component of concrete essential for such developments.
“A lot of the sand that’s been extracted is being used as a construction material at some of the big state-organized construction sites in Pyongyang and elsewhere. The sand is being used as a construction material for public facilities and 10,000 housing units in Pyongyang, as well as the new campus of the Central Cadres Training School,” the source said.
“Right now, there’s a huge demand for sand for construction projects in Pyongyang’s Hwasong district housing development and for repairs of roads, bridges, and locks on rivers. Thousands of tons of sand are being mined from the Taedong River every day. Both professional construction crews and civilian ‘shock troops’ have been brought in to work on the mining.”
Some of the mined sand is shipped on barges to the end users. Other sand is heaped up on the riverbanks to dry and then loaded onto 10- or 15-ton trucks that will take it to its final destination.
North Korea has been mining sand on the lower Taedong River for some time and is currently expanding the mining zones, as can be easily deduced from satellite images provided by Google Earth and other sources.
North Korea’s sand mining operations are under the strict supervision and control of the Cabinet, the source said.
“The Ministry of Land and Environment Protection and the Ministry of Construction and Building-Materials Industry oversee all work related to sand mining. They’re also systematically arranging for the collected sand to be smoothly transported to the areas where it’s needed.”
Some sand sold to China in violation of sanctions
However, some of the collected sand is being sold abroad to earn foreign currency for the North Korean government.
The U.N. Security Council designated sand as a sanctioned item when it adopted Resolution 2397 against North Korea in 2017. But North Korea has continued to export sand off the record, taking pains to evade the international sanctions monitoring regime.
“Sand has several categories, with the top quality being graded and then categorized into sand for export and sand for use at home. Sand transactions are typically conducted quietly and clandestinely because of the sanctions,” the source said.
In a 2019 report, Daily NK quoted a source in North Pyongan province as saying that North Korean and Chinese trading companies had signed a contract for exporting sand and that North Korea had earned at least $3 million on the deal.
Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.
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