A large vegetable greenhouse farm, which cannot be seen even in Western countries with a developed greenhouse farming history like the Netherlands, also known as a country of flowers, has wonderfully been built on the outskirts of Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK.

Named the Kangdong Greenhouse Complex, it was inaugurated and went into operation on March 15. Covering an area of over 260 hectares, it has more than 1 050 buildings, including vegetable greenhouses, production and public buildings and dwelling houses.

Introduced below are some of the characteristics of the complex.

“Plant factory” - greenhouses equipped with cylindrical vegetable cultivation devices

It is needless to say that the industrialization of agriculture is the ultimate goal of the development of modern agriculture.

The Kangdong Greenhouse Complex has the “plant factory”, a greenhouse with cylindrical vegetable cultivation devices, in which it has completely been achieved.

In the greenhouse, essential environment and all conditions for the growth of crops are artificially provided at the ideal level and vegetables are produced by industrial method.

An advantage of the cylindrical vegetable cultivation device is that the absorption of nutritive substances and light utilization efficiency are very high because the cultivation frame turns round in a certain period and vegetable crops are distributed around the source of light in the shape of a cylinder.

In the dust- and germ-free greenhouse 42 such devices have been installed and vegetables can be harvested 20 days after young seedlings are transplanted.

At present, dozens of varieties of functional vegetables are growing here.

Digital greenhouse

An intelligent integrated production system for all greenhouses has been established in the Kangdong Greenhouse Complex. So, their environments and growth of crops there are measured and automatically read in real time and accordingly all production processes are automatically controlled including the provision of optimized production conditions.

The intelligent integrated production system consists of a virtual (cyber) production system, a distributed control system, terminal industrial information devices and industrial automation programming tools. Accordingly, a dual control system has been established to ensure the general control of the whole complex and the automatic control of each type of or individual greenhouses.

“If a problem arises in the growth of crops, we take measures in the virtual production system first and apply indexes with good results in reality. This is an important element of the intelligent integrated production system,” said Kim Song Hak, technical staffer of the complex.

Various types of greenhouses, “greenhouse town”

The third large-scale vegetable greenhouse built in recent five years, the Kangdong Greenhouse Complex has broken new ground in the architectural style in the DPRK which is ushering in a new era of greenhouse vegetable production.

There are seven kinds of greenhouses in the complex, like greenhouse with cylindrical vegetable cultivation devices, double-slope inter-connected glass hydroponic greenhouse, semi-arched double-layer vinyl hydroponic greenhouse, arch-style inter-connected vinyl soil greenhouse and vinyl greenhouse.

In addition, multi- and low-storeyed and terraced dwelling houses for more than 1 200 families, a nursery, a kindergarten, a school and a polyclinic have sprung up around the greenhouse area like a picture to blend in well with the surrounding geographical features, turning the area into a “greenhouse town”.

100% localization

“The advanced industrial information devices and industrial automation programs introduced into the Kangdong Greenhouse Complex were developed and made by our scientists and technicians 100 percent,” said Choe Song, head of the modernization institute of the State Academy of Sciences.

Thousands of information devices and control programs have been introduced into the complex.

Scientists and technicians of the State Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Agricultural Science and other scientific research and educational institutions made and developed the advanced information devices, cultivation devices and programs by their own efforts.

For example, they are the general measuring device for hydroponic cultivation which measures the supply of nutrient solution, growth of crops and damage by blights and harmful insects and sends them to the integrated production system, the high-pressure mist spraying system which can lower the temperature and raise the humidity inside greenhouses in hot summer, the automatic agrochemicals sprayer, the environment control board, the cylindrical vegetable cultivation device, the intelligent integrated control system and the distributed control system.

They also developed substrate for hydroponic cultivation with the nutrient solution for vegetable production and perlite as raw materials, the nutrient solution reclaiming system and others by their own efforts to considerably reduce their production costs.

In one year

The Kangdong Greenhouse Complex is not only noteworthy in modernity and advancement, convenience and originality but also amazing in the construction speed.

The service personnel of the Korean People’s Army in charge of the construction completed the project in a matter of a year with a high sense of loyalty and patriotism and in high spirits peculiar to them.

The construction of the greenhouses was really a war with nature and a contest of will.

It rained heavily and underground water continued to gush out, but the drainage capacity was so poor to pump out the water rising hour by hour in the construction site. However, the commanding officers held field consultative meetings dozens of times a day and innovative ideas came up one after another in order to carry out the assignments which were so tough that no one would even dare to do by conventional means.

Turning the impossible into possible, the soldier-builders finally completed the construction of underground structures as planned in the indomitable fighting spirit by employing the method of cooperative, continuous and concentrated operation.

Investment for people

A large sum of money was disbursed for the construction of the Kangdong Greenhouse Complex. Vegetables produced in the complex are wholly to be supplied to the citizens of Pyongyang.

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, who has the immutable will to provide the people with a rich and happy life as soon as possible, ensured that the Sixth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea decided the construction of a large greenhouse farm in the Kangdong area as a major construction task.

He illuminated the plans and ways to complete the project in the shortest period, ranging from the selection of the construction site to the formation of construction force and the supply of materials and personally chose and sent the most advanced agricultural science and technology data appropriate to the application of intensive greenhouse vegetable production.

He guided more than 300 mock-ups for the construction of the complex, including the master plan and bird’s-eye view, and over 3 800 technical design drawings.