Transport in North Korea

The standard route to and from North Korea is by plane through Beijing, People's Republic of China. Transport directly to and from South Korea has been possible on a limited scale from 2003, when a road was opened (bus tours, no private cars).

Roads

Fuel constraints and the near absence of private automobiles have relegated road transportation to a secondary role. The road network was estimated to be around 31,200 km in 1999 up from between 23,000 and 30,000 km in 1990, of which only 1,717 kilometers--7.5 percent--are paved; the rest are of dirt, crushed stone, or gravel, and are poorly maintained. There are three major multilane highways: a 200-kilometer expressway connecting P'yongyang and Wonsan on the east coast, a forty-three-kilometer expressway connecting P'yongyang and its port, Namp'o, and a four-lane 100- kilometer motorway linking P'yongyang and Kaesong. The overwhelming majority of the estimated 264,000 vehicles in use in 1990 were for the military. Rural bus service connects all villages, and cities have bus and tram services. Since 1945/1946, there is Right-hand traffic on roads.

Public Transport

There is a mix of local built and imported trolleybuses and trams in urban centres in North Korea. Earlier fleets were obtained in Europe and China, but trade embargo has forced North Korea to build their own vehicles.For more see Trams and Trolleybuses in North Korea

Water transport

Water transport on the major rivers and along the coasts plays growing role in freight and passenger traffic. Except for the Yalu and Taedong rivers, most of the inland waterways, totaling 2,253 kilometers, are navigable only by small boats. Coastal traffic is heaviest on the eastern seaboard, whose deeper waters can accommodate larger vessels. The major ports are Nampho on the west coast and Rajin, Chongjin, Wonsan, and Hamhung on the east coast. The country's harbor loading capacity in the 1990s was estimated at almost 35 million tons a year. In the early 1990s, North Korea possessed an oceangoing merchant fleet, largely domestically produced, of sixty-eight ships (of at least 1,000 gross-registered tons), totaling 465,801 gross-registered tons (DWT|709,442|metric|first=yes), which includes fifty-eight cargo ships and two tankers. There is a continuing investment in upgrading and expanding port facilities, developing transportation--particularly on the Taedong River--and increasing the share of international cargo by domestic vessels.

Merchant marine

203 ships (GRT|1,000|metric|first=yes or over) totaling GRT|921,557|metric/DWT|1,339,929
"ships by type:"
bulk carrier 6, cargo ship 166, combination bulk carrier 2, container ship 3, liquefied gas 1, livestock carrier 3, multi-functional large load carrier 1, passenger/cargo ship 1, petroleum tanker 11, refrigerated cargo ship 6, roll-on/roll-off 2, short-sea/passenger 1

Air transport

North Korea's international air connections are limited. There are regularly scheduled flights from the Sunan International Airport--twenty-four kilometers north of Pyongyang--to Moscow, Khabarovsk, Beijing, Macau, Vladivostok, Bangkok, Shenyang, Shenzhen and charter flights from Sunan to Tokyo as well as to East European countries, the Middle East, and Africa. An agreement to initiate a service between Pyongyang and Tokyo was signed in 1990. Internal flights between Pyongyang, Hamhung, Wonsan, and Chongjin. All civil aircraft operated by Air Koryo are thirty-four aircraft in 2008, these were purchased from the Soviet Union and Russia. From 1976 to 1978, four Tu-154 jets were added to the small fleet of propeller-driven An-24s afterwards adding four long range Ilyushin Il-62M, three Ilyushin Il-76MD large cargo aircraft and 2 long range Tupolev Tu-204-300's purchased in 2008.

North Korea has an estimated 78 usable airports, 35 of which had permanent-surface runways and 43, unpaved runways. (2003 est.)

Airports - with paved runways

"total:"35
"over 3,047 m:"3
"2,438 to 3,047 m:"23
"1,524 to 2,437 m:"5
"914 to 1,523 m:"1
"under 914 m:"3 (2003 est.)

Airports - with unpaved runways

"total:"43
"2,438 to 3,047 m:"1
"1,524 to 2,437 m:"20
"914 to 1,523 m:"14
"under 914 m:"8 (2003 est.)

Pipelines

There were 154 kilometers of oil pipelines in North Korea in 2006

References

*loc
* [http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=EarthTransportation&Number=722626&Searchpage=1&Main=722626&Words=north+korea&topic=&Search=true#Post722626 Download a map of the entire North Korean Railway system to Google Earth here.]

* Ducruet, Cesar et Jo, Jin-Cheol (2008) Coastal Cities, Port Activities and Logistic Constraints in a Socialist Developing Country: The Case of North Korea, Transport Reviews, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 1-25: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/462288788-26821155/content~content=a782923580~db=all~tab=content~order=page
* Jo, Jin-Cheol et Ducruet, Cesar (2007) Rajin-Seonbong, new gateway of Northeast Asia, Annals of Regional Science, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 927-950: http://www.springerlink.com/content/625g177v07722201
* Jo, Jin-Cheol et Ducruet, Cesar (2006) Maritime trade and port evolution in a socialist developing country : Nampo, gateway of North Korea, The Korea Spatial Planning Review, Vol. 51, pp. 3-24: http://library.krihs.re.kr/file/publication/att_file/publication2/PR51_01.pdf
* DUCRUET, Cesar, JO, Jin-Cheol, LEE, Sung-Woo, ROUSSIN, Stanislas, 2008, Geopolitics of shipping networks: the case of North Korea's maritime connections, Sustainability in International Shipping, Port and Logistics Industries and the China Factor, International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME), Dalian, China, April 2-4.
* DUCRUET, Cesar, ROUSSIN, Stanislas, 2007, The changing relations between hinterland and foreland at North Korean ports (1985-2006), 6th Inha & Le Havre International Conference, Inha University, Incheon, Republic of Korea, October 10-11.
* DUCRUET, Cesar, ROUSSIN, Stanislas, 2007, Inter-Korean maritime linkages: economic integration vs. hub dependence, 15th European Conference on Theoretical and Quantitative Geography, Montreux, Switzerland, September 7-11, pp. 133-139 [ISBN 978-2-940368-05-1] .
* ROUSSIN, Stanislas, DUCRUET, Cesar, 2007, The Nampo-Pyongyang corridor: a strategic area for European investment in DPRK, Recent Changes in North Korea and the Role of the European Union, Institute of Unification Studies & Hans Seidel Foundation, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, June 1.
* ROUSSIN, Stanislas, DUCRUET, Cesar, 2007, Doing business in DPRK for the European companies: the logistic issue, Seogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, May 26.
* ROUSSIN, Stanislas, DUCRUET, Cesar, 2006, Logistic perspectives in DPRK, Annual Fall Meeting of the Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers, Seoul, Republic of Korea, September 15-16.
* Ducruet, Cesar et Roussin, Stanislas (2007) Coree du Nord : vers l'ouverture des ports maritimes, Journal de la Marine Marchande, No. 4566, Juin 22, pp. 6-9.
* Ducruet, Cesar et Roussin, Stanislas (2007) L'archipel nord-coreen : transition economique et blocages territoriaux, Mappemonde, Vol. 87, http://mappemonde.mgm.fr/num15/articles/art07302.html

See also

* North Korea
* [http://www.air-koryo.co.uk/ Air Koryo Korean Airways(JS) Official Web Site]
* [http://www.pyongyang-metro.com/ Pyongyang Metro System Unofficial Web Site]
* List of Korea-related topics