North Korea has been building a new coal-powered thermal power plant near Pyongyang in a sign that the destitute nation is struggling to resolve chronic electricity shortages, a U.S. researcher said Tuesday.
Commercial satellite imagery shows that construction of the power plant began sometime in late 2010 or early 2011 in Kangdong County, in eastern Pyongyang, said Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in a report on the website 38 North.