NKorea completes plans for 100,000 city apartment

North Korea has completed plans for 100,000 new apartments in high-rise blocks, which will be built by 2012 to mark a major anniversary, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper said Tuesday.

Blueprints for the apartment blocks, which will all be between 18 and 30 storeys high, have been finalised, Chosun Sinbo said on its website.

The apartment blocks will be located in three districts of the capital Pyongyang including Mangyongdae, said the newspaper, published in Tokyo for Korean residents there.

"The apartments to be built in Mangyongdae district's Daepyong area will be composed of a grandiose home district befitting the beautiful natural surroundings formed by Mount Ryongak and the Taedong River," it said.

Plans for new infrastructure and leisure facilities were also drawn up. "Service networks including restaurants and shops are also being sited in the most convenient way," it added.

Foreign residents say work is going ahead to smarten up Pyongyang and other cities in time for 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding father Kim Il-Sung.

The North's official goal is to become a "great, prosperous, powerful nation" by then, even though it currently suffers from severe shortages of food, raw materials and electricity.

An online newspaper run by North Korean defectors in Seoul said last week the construction project in Pyongyang is exacerbating resource shortages in the provinces, halting work on several projects.

The government has ordered provinces to rely on their own resources to complete projects, it added. (AFP)