The Pyongyang General Hospital, a long-cherished project of State Affairs Commission Chairman Kim Jong-un, opened five and a half years after groundbreaking.
On the 4th, the Korean Central News Agency said the Pyongyang General Hospital opened on the 3rd and began treating patients. The agency promoted the hospital as world-class and said patients who visited received the best medical service.
Kim Jong-un attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the Pyongyang General Hospital in March 2020. He ordered it to be completed by Oct. of that year, the 75th anniversary of the party's founding, but a shortage of materials and the COVID-19 situation delayed completion.
In Feb., the hospital had finished the exterior of the building but had not installed medical equipment; by Sept., when Kim Jong-un returned, most equipment installation and staffing were largely complete.
At the hospital's completion ceremony last month, Kim Jong-un said it was "among the things I really most wanted to do, a project I always placed at the very top in my heart."
In March, the Ministry of Unification assessed that the Pyongyang General Hospital appears to be on the scale of a domestic top-tier general hospital like Samsung Medical Center. In Korea, private top-tier general hospitals generally have 2,000 beds or more.