(PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA) – Satellite imagery has revealed dramatic changes in North Korea’s capital city since Russia’s war in Ukraine began, with the lit area of Pyongyang growing by nearly two and a half times and becoming almost three and a half times brighter, according to analysis by geopolitical commentator Paul Warburg.
The footage, released on 31st August 2026, shows that North Korea’s capital experienced its first recorded traffic jam this year as foreign vehicles flowed into the country, a striking development for what remains the least free society on the planet.
“The lit area of North Korea’s capital city has grown by nearly two and a half times and has also become nearly three and a half times brighter, suggesting a larger footprint and more electricity being used per person than ever before,” Warburg stated.
The satellite images, captured by Western operated satellites, cannot be dismissed as state propaganda. They represent verifiable data showing genuine growth in Pyongyang, alongside the spread of smartphones and food delivery applications.
However, Warburg cautioned against interpreting these developments through a Western lens. North Korea is not experiencing organic economic liberalisation. The growth is heavily concentrated, with 73 percent of Pyongyang’s area remaining dark and unchanged while development clustered specifically around the downtown core in the Jang and Morenbong districts.
“A capital within a capital,” Warburg observed.
The regime of Kim Jong-un announced in 2024 that it would build modern factories in 20 different counties each year for the next five years. Satellite imagery tells a different story, with only five of the 20 named counties showing any increase in brightness despite the promised development.
“North Korea simply doesn’t have the power grid to support these projects or the regions surrounding them,” Warburg explained. “The state can build the buildings and have the ceremonies, but actually getting the country online in a real tangible way is an entirely different story.”
The genuine North Korean development outside Pyongyang is occurring not in North Korea but in the Russian Far East, a region accounting for 40 percent of all Russian territory and comparable in size to the continental United States.
The region’s population of approximately eight million is declining rapidly, with projections indicating a further eight percent loss by the end of the decade. Yet construction continues, with the labour force largely composed of North Korean workers.
North Korea is building infrastructure in four specific Russian cities, all of which serve as trading hubs for goods flowing from Russia into North Korea. These goods are payment for military equipment, particularly artillery shells from North Korea’s ageing stockpiles.
“Three of these cities sit remarkably close to North Korea, just to the north,” Warburg noted. “And the fourth city is essentially the entrance from the rest of Russia into the area where these three cities sit.”
The North Koreans are not only building homes but also working farms and bringing production to land that historically lacked sufficient population. This represents a remarkable reversal for a region where Russia historically expelled Koreans.
“The underlying cause, of course, is the war in Ukraine, which has weakened Russia to the point of making concessions, which they historically have found intolerable,” Warburg stated.
The benefits of this arrangement flow not to Moscow, located over 8,000 kilometres away, but to Pyongyang, which sits just a few hundred kilometres to the south.
Warburg concluded that North Korea is likely establishing de facto control of Russian held regions, with the product of the land and trade routes benefiting the closer imperial capital.
“The capital has grown, but nothing has fundamentally changed in North Korea,” Warburg said. “North Korea is rising. On the other hand, they’re rising at the expense of Russia.”
He described the situation as “the snake eating its own tail. North Korea consuming what was Russian.”
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