Travel Guide Hoeryong 회령시

Hoeryong is a kind of border city between the Chinese province of Jilin and North Korea. It was built in the 15th century to protect the Korean peninsula from Manchu invasions and then became an important mining centre. After Pyongyang, Hoeryong is the most visited city by North Koreans: Kim Il-sung's first wife and Kim Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, were born there. Many pilgrimages are organized in honour of the woman who was declared a heroine of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It is possible to visit her birthplace and see the place where she fled North Korea in the 1940s to Russia before returning to Pyongyang with her husband.After Japan's surrender in 1945, about 30,000 Japanese prisoners there died of starvation and cold, which Pyongyang never formally acknowledged.