Kim Jong Un orders Sinuiju development project completion by 2022
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un announced during a visit to Sinuiju last month that the city’s modernization project must be finished by April 15, 2022. Kim has emphasized that the modernization of Sinuiju is an important “legacy” of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, who both handed down “teachings” relevant to the project’s completion.
“The Sinuiju Development Plan is being guided directly by Comrade Kim Jong Un and is similar in nature to the Sinuiju International Economic Zone,” said a high-level source in Pyongyang on December 10. “The development of Sinuiju is expected to take place for four years from 2018 and be completed by Kim Il Sung’s birthday in 2022.”
The announcements suggest that North Korea is intending to move forward with an expanded version of the Sinuiju International Economic Zone. The regime announced in 2016 that it would develop an international economic zone in Sinuiju 13 times larger than Yeouido in Seoul. However, the government has failed to garner support from foreign companies and investors due to international sanctions following the country’s fourth nuclear test.
“North Korea aims to construct a world-class international economic zone in Sinuiju that combines the tourism, advanced technology, financial and trade sectors. Some people, however, think that the project will take around five years to complete. There’s emphasis being placed on the success of the project to both resolutely crush the attempts by the combined imperialist forces to choke the country to death and to allow North Korea to achieve a golden age of socialist economic construction,” he said. ......
[Source: Daily NK]
