North Korea · electricity network

North Korea power grid

OverWatts maps 1,554 km of North Korea's electricity transmission network across 107 line segments and 0 substations, the 96th most-mapped grid of 153 countries. Its backbone is high voltage (220–379 kV), carrying 1,554 km — 100% of the mapped length, with the highest tagged voltage at 220 kV. That works out to 12.4 km per 1,000 km² of land — partial OpenStreetMap coverage, ahead of 43% of mapped countries. It is connected to 1 neighbouring grid by 50 MW of existing cross-border transfer capacity.

1,554 km
Mapped transmission line
0
Substations
#96
of 153 mapped grids
50 MW
cross-border · 1 neighbours
220 kV
Highest voltage

OpenStreetMap coverage

Partial12.4 km / 1,000 km²ahead of 43% of 153 mapped countries

This grades how completely OpenStreetMap has drawn North Korea's network — not how much network exists. Large, sparsely-populated countries score low for geographic reasons alone, and every kilometre here is mapped length, so the totals are a floor rather than an operator-reported figure. 0% of segments carry a real line name and 0% an operator tag.

Mapped line length by voltage

107 segments · a segment is credited to the country containing its midpoint, so a border-crossing line counts once, on one side.

Cross-border links from North Korea

50 MW existing · capacities from the Global Transmission Database v0.1 (CC BY 4.0), existing as of 2023

On the interactive map

Open the interactive map →

Load against the network

6.3 GW
Operating generation
km of line per substation
12.4
km per 1,000 km²

Where there is room to connect a new load depends on published hosting capacity, which most operators release only as their own map. OverWatts does not yet ingest those feeds, so these are the density measures the open data supports — generation and mapped demand against mapped network — not a headroom figure.

How North Korea compares · mapped grid by country

Frequently asked

How big is North Korea's transmission network?
OverWatts maps 1,554 km of transmission line in North Korea, across 107 segments, plus 0 substations. This is mapped length from OpenStreetMap, not an operator-reported total — where OSM is incomplete the figure is a floor, never a ceiling.
What voltage is North Korea's grid?
Most of the mapped network is high voltage (220–379 kV): 1,554 km of 1,554 km. The highest voltage tagged anywhere in the country is 220 kV.
How complete is the grid map for North Korea?
Partial — 12.4 km of mapped line per 1,000 km² of land, ahead of 43% of the 153 countries with any mapped grid. Coverage grades how completely OpenStreetMap has drawn the network, not how much network exists; large, sparsely-populated countries score low for geographic reasons alone.
What interconnectors connect North Korea to its neighbours?
50 MW of cross-border transfer capacity to China. Capacities are from the Global Transmission Database (v1.0, 2023).

Elsewhere in North Korea

Network geometry: OpenStreetMap (ODbL) © OpenStreetMap contributors, ingested and measured by OverWatts · derived 2026-07-26. Counts every mapped line of 220 kV and above; the map layer draws the ≥380 kV backbone only, so it shows less than is measured here.