Power-starved North Korea turns to solar energy to
North Korea is increasingly turning to solar power to help meet its energy needs, as the isolated regime seeks to reduce its
Jeong-hyeon, a North Korean escapee, told the Financial Times that many residents in Hamhung, the second-most populous city, “relied on a solar panel, a battery and a power generator to light their houses and power their television”. But solar power is still only a partial solution to the country's energy woes.
“We would turn the light on when we ate and then we turned it off right away.” North Korea's ramshackle electricity grid draws on ageing hydro and coal-fired thermal power stations, many of them built during the cold war with Chinese and Soviet assistance. UN sanctions restrict the regime's imports of refined oil and petroleum products.
UN sanctions restrict the regime's imports of refined oil and petroleum products. Pyongyang relies on shipments from China and Russia, as well as networks of smugglers and organised criminal groups.
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