North Korea debuts new beach resort in tourism push – National

North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un has officially opened a new beach resort in the country’s Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone — six years after it was due to be completed, state media reported on Thursday.

The massive tourist zone, located on North Korea’s east coast, is part of a key project pushed by Kim Jong Un for years to promote tourism in the notoriously exclusionist country.

With “great satisfaction,” Kim attended an inaugural ceremony for the Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, adding that the resort can accommodate about 20,000 visitors and that the country would build more large-scale tourist zones quickly.

According to the national news agency, the tourist area offers sunbathing facilities along a four-kilometre beach and various sports, amusement, commercial and public catering services as well as a wide variety of accommodations, year-round.

The area has long been a vacation destination for locals, but Kim wanted to transform it into a sprawling billion-dollar tourism hotspot inspired by “Korean-style tourism.”

“When Kim Jong Un arrived, stormy cheers of ‘Hurrah!’ resounded far and wide,” the KCNA reported.

Tourism in North Korea is not an industry targeted by United Nations sanctions, but the elusive country did not collaborate with any foreign partner to develop the Wonsan project because of economic sanctions over its nuclear weapons programs.

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North Korea is one of the world’s most impoverished countries, and has been run by the Kim family since 1948, who channel most of the isolated state’s capital into its military, national monuments and landmarks in Pyongyang, the country’s capital.

The new beach resort will be open to domestic visitors as of July 1, KCNA confirmed, but there was no mention of allowing international tourists.

North Korea shut its borders in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic but has been slowly lifting restrictions since 2023, allowing Russian visitors in the following year.

Russian tourist groups have been allowed into North Korea, but its capital is usually closed to regular tourism, though in April, it hosted a marathon event with foreign participants.

The Russian ambassador to North Korea and embassy staff were in attendance as special guests during the beach resort opening ceremony, KCNA said.

Russia and North Korea are partnering to grow tourism in both countries and have restarted a direct commuter train service between their capitals, Moscow and Pyongyang, for the first time since 2020.

— With files from Reuters

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