Dredging Disadvantage? Pyongyang's Never-Ending Sand Issue

It doesn't take long for visitors to Pyongyang to notice the small boats dotted along the Taedong river, mounted either with cranes or laden with aggregate-filled cargoes. The presence of these dredgers, removing sands, sediment, and shingle from the bottom of the water body, is one of the many things that set the city apart. Working all year round – with the exception of when the river freezes in winter – men aboard these boats can be seen collecting and sorting materials from the riverbed around the clock. Dredging is done for various reasons around the world, but a 1980s policy by North Korea's founding president Kim Il Sung - the construction of the Nampo Dam - largely explains why the process has for so long been critical to the capital city. And the results it yields provide more than environmental benefits, with the sand and aggregates extracted helping construction projects all over the city, as well as an emerging entrepreneurial class. The sand buildup is largely caused by

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