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North Korea Roads
Fuel constraints and the near absence of private automobiles
have relegated road transportation to a secondary role. The road
network was estimated between 23,000 and 30,000 kilometers in
1990, of which only 1,717 kilometers--7.5 percent--are paved; the
rest are of dirt, crushed stone, or gravel, and are poorly
maintained
(see
fig. 8). There are three major multilane
highways: a 200-kilometer expressway connecting P'yongyang and
Wnsan on the east coast, a forty-three-kilometer expressway
connecting P'yongyang and its port, Namp'o, and a four-lane 100-
kilometer highway linking P'yongyang and Kaesng. The
overwhelming majority of the estimated 264,000 vehicles in use in
1990 were for the military. Rural bus service connects all
villages, and cities have bus and tram services. In 1973 an
extravagantly outfitted, two-line 30.5-kilometer subway system
was completed in P'yongyang.
Data as of June 1993
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