North Korea has completed construction of a massive tourist zone on its east coast, state media reported on Thursday, a key project driven by leader Kim Jong Un for years to promote tourism.
With “great satisfaction”, Kim attended an inaugural ceremony for the Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area that could accommodate about 20,000 visitors and said the country would build more large-scale tourist zones swiftly, KCNA news agency said.
Kim has been rebuilding the seaside city of Wonsan, a vacation destination for locals, to turn it into a billion-dollar tourist hotspot. Development plans for Wonsan have mushroomed since they were first announced in 2014. The Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist zone has hotels and other accommodations for guests who can swim in the sea, engage in sports and recreation activities and eat at restaurants and cafeterias on site, state media said.
However, while tourism is one of a narrow range of cash sources for North Korea not targeted by United Nations sanctions, the reclusive state did not have a major foreign partner for the Wonsan project against the backdrop of sanctions over its weapons programmes.
The tourist zone will open for domestic guests from July 1, KCNA said, without mentioning foreign tourists. 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 too 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 sealed its borders in 2020 at the start of the pandemic but has been slowly lifting restrictions since 2023.
It has allowed Russian tourist groups into the country but its capital and other parts of the country remain closed to regular tourism, though in April it held a marathon event hosting foreign runners.
Russia’s Primorsky region, which borders North Korea, said that the first group of Russian tourists to the resort will depart on July 7. The region’s press service said that during their eight-day trip, Russian tourists will also have an opportunity to visit major attractions in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
Moscow and Pyongyang, both economically and politically isolated, have drawn closer as North Korea has deployed thousands of troops and supplied ammunition, artillery and missiles for Russia’s Ukraine war.
The Russian ambassador to North Korea and embassy staff were invited as special guests for the Wonsan ceremony, according to KCNA.
The two countries have agreed to expand cooperation on tourism, restarting a direct passenger train service between their capitals for the first time since 2020.
“Kim Jong Un expressed belief that the wave of the happiness to be raised in the Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area would enhance its attractive name as a world-level tourist cultural resort”, KCNA said.
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 U.S. 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. (Reuters/AP)
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