Kimjŏngsuk County is a ''kun'', or county, in

Ryanggang Ryanggang Province (Ryanggangdo; ko, 량강도, ''Ryanggang-do'', ) is a province in North Korea. The province is bordered by China (Jilin) on the north, North Hamgyong on the east, South Hamgyong on the south, and Chagang on the west. Ryang ...

province,

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...

, along the

Yalu River The Yalu River, known by Koreans as the Amrok River or Amnok River, is a river on the border between North Korea and China. Together with the Tumen River to its east, and a small portion of Paektu Mountain, the Yalu forms the border between ...

. Originally part of

Samsu Samsu County is a ''kun'', or county, in Ryanggang province, North Korea. Prior to 1954, it was part of South Hamgyŏng province. Geography On its northern border, Samsu shares the Yalu River with China. It also shares a border with the provi ...

, the county was made a separate entity in 1952. Formerly known as Sinpa, it was named in 1981 after

Kim Jong-suk Kim Jong-suk (; 24 December 1917Suh Dae-sook. Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. – 22 September 1949) was a Korean anti-Japanese guerrilla, a Communist activist, North Korean leader Kim Il ...

, the mother of

Kim Jong-il Kim Jong-il (; ; ; born Yuri Irsenovich Kim;, 16 February 1941 – 17 December 2011) was a North Korean politician who was the second supreme leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. He led North Korea from the 1994 death of his father Kim ...

. The Sinpa Revolutionary Site there is associated with Kim Jong-suk's underground political activities there during the

anti-Japanese struggle The Korean independence movement was a military and diplomatic campaign to achieve the independence of Korea from Japan. After the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, Korea's domestic resistance peaked in the March 1st Movement of 1919, which w ...

Geography

Kimjŏngsuk lies in the northern portion of the

Kaema Plateau The Kaema Plateau is a highland in North Korea. It is surrounded by the Rangrim Mountains, the Macheollyeong Mountains and the Bujeollyeong Mountains. Elevation varies between 700 and 2,000 meters and is approximately 40,000 square kilometers. ...

, and slopes downward toward the north. The

Changjin River Changjin County is a mountainous county in South Hamgyong Province, North Korea. Geography Changjin lies on the Rangrim and Pujŏllyong ranges, and most of the county sits atop the Kaema Plateau. Due to this location, Changjin has a particul ...

flows through the county, which is traversed by the Puksubaek Mountains and Huisaekbong Mountains. The highest point is Huisaekbong itself, 2185 m. Some 92% of the county's area is forestland. The chief rivers are the Yalu and the Changjin. The climate varies, with extremely cold temperatures prevailing in the south, and 3-3.5 ℃ warmer temperatures along the Yalu in the north.

Administrative divisions

Kimjŏngsuk county is divided into 1 ''ŭp'' (town), 2 ''rodongjagu'' (workers' districts) and 22 ''ri'' (villages):

Economy

The chief local industry is logging; there is little agriculture, except for some rice cultivation along the Yalu. A certain amount of wheat, maize, soybeans, and potatoes are also produced. There are local deposits of molybdenum, gold, copper, silver, lead, zinc and

tungsten Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively as compounds with other elements. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isolat ...

Honeybees A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosmo ...

and other livestock are also raised. Hydropower is abundant.

Food processing Food processing is the transformation of agricultural products into food, or of one form of food into other forms. Food processing includes many forms of processing foods, from grinding grain to make raw flour to home cooking to complex industr ...

dominates local manufacturing.

Transportation

The county is served by both road and rail, with the

Pukbunaeryuk Line The Pukbunaeryuk Line, also called the Hyesan–Manp'o Ch'ŏngnyŏn Line after the only completed stage of three planned stages, is an electrified standard-gauge secondary trunk line of the Korean State Railway in Chagang and Ryanggang Provinces ...

of the

Korean State Railway The Korean State Railway (), commonly called the State Rail () is the operating arm of the Ministry of Railways of North Korea and has its headquarters at P'yŏngyang. The current Minister of Railways is Chang Jun Song. History 1945–195 ...

passing through the county.

References

External links