North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has hailed the opening of a new beach resort in his country as a “great success” as he looks to drive tourism in the sealed-off nation.
The state says the coastal tourist site will usher in a new era in its tourism industry, though there is no word on when the country will fully reopen to foreign visitors.
The Wonsan-Kalma resort has hotels and other accommodation for nearly 20,000 guests who can swim in the sea, play sports and eat in restaurants on the site, state media said.
North Korean leader Kim toured the site and cut the inaugural tape at a lavish ceremony on Tuesday, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Kim said its construction would be “one of the greatest successes this year” and a “proud first step” towards the government's policy of developing tourism, according to KCNA.
The resort will reportedly open to domestic tourists next Tuesday, but it is not clear when foreign visitors will be allowed in.
Observers say the resort likely required a huge investment from North Korea's limited budget, so it eventually will have to accept Chinese and other foreign tourists to break even.
Kim has been pushing to make the country a tourism hub as part of efforts to revive the ailing economy, and the Wonsan-Kalma zone is one of his most talked-about tourism projects. KCNA reported North Korea will confirm plans to build large tourist sites in other parts of the country, too.
North Korea has not fully lifted a ban on foreign tourists that it imposed in early 2020 to guard against the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts say the country has been slow to resume its international tourism because of remaining pandemic curbs, a flare-up of tensions with the U.S. and South Korea in recent years and worries about Western tourists spreading a negative image of its system.
Starting from February 2024, North Korea has been accepting Russian tourists amid the booming military and other partnerships between the two countries, but Chinese group tours, which made up more than 90% of visitors before the pandemic, remain stalled.
In February this year, a small group of international tourists visited the country for the first time in five years, but tourist agencies said in March that their tours to North Korea were paused.
Lee Sangkeun, an expert at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea's intelligence agency, said: “I think North Korea will soon accept Russian tourists, given the Russian Embassy officials attended the ceremony. Summer business is important.
“There seems to be issues that North Korea hasn't yet resolved in its relations with China. But North Korea has put in too much money on tourism and plans to spend more. Subsequently, to get its money's worth, North Korea can't help receiving Chinese tourists.”
Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, also said that foreign tourism to the Wonsan-Kalma site will begin with Russians. But he said Chinese tours to the zone, a sort of civilian exchange, will also begin soon, adding bilateral trade between China and North Korea has been recovering.
Lim said that South Korean and American tours to North Korea won't likely restart anytime soon, though both new liberal South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and US President Donald Trump have expressed hopes to revive dialogue with North Korea.
In January when Trump boasted about his ties with Kim, he said “I think he has tremendous condo capabilities. He's got a lot of shoreline,” a likely reference to Wonsan-Kalma.
North Korea hasn't publicly responded to Trump's outreach. It has repeatedly rejected Washington and Seoul's dialogue offers and focused on expanding its nuclear weapons program since Kim's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.
