Pyongyang General Hospital
The Pyongyang General Hospital is an under-construction hospital in Pyongyang, North Korea. The hospital is located in front of Monument to Party Founding. Its groundbreaking took place on 19 March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its construction is currently proceeding on the basis of a "speed campaign" with an expected completion date of October 2020, before the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Workers' Party of Korea. NK News reported that the project had been agreed at a four-day meeting ending on 31 December 2019, which had "discussed and decided on the tasks to first construct a modern general hospital in Pyongyang for the promotion of the health of the people for the 75th Party Foundation anniversary".
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Chairman Kim Jong-un admitted that there were "numerous obstacles" to completing the hospital in such short a time and that completion of the hospital would come at the expense of other projects. After groundbreaking, several officials penned op-eds in Rodong Sinmun vowing to wage “all-night battles” for the hospital's construction.
By April 2, foundation works were already 63% complete, according to the Pyongyang Times. The hospital is considered the first major project of the "head-on breakthrough" campaign, in the mould of the Chollima Movement, conceived in the wake of the failure of the Hanoi summit and the subsequent downplaying of the five-year plan. By 15 June, the two towers of the hospital had topped-out.
