A woman who visited North Korea’s glitzy beach resort has opened up about what she experienced there.
The seaside retreat, Wonsan Kalma, opened in June and is located on the country’s east coast, near an airport in Kangwon Region.
It was originally planned to boost tourism and has been described by state media as a ‘national treasure-level city’.
Since its opening, all tourists except for those from Russia have been banned from visiting the resort.
Russian blogger Daria Zubkova spent time at the brand new destination and revealed all.
She travelled from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok in Russia and then to Pyongyang.
After spending three days in Pyongyang, she stayed at the Wonsan Kalma resort, which stretches along 2.5miles of white-sand coastline.
Reportedly modelled on Benidorm, the retreat apparently has a capacity of up to 20,000 visitors and features over 40 hotels, guesthouses, and leisure facilities.
‘This is a new resort that is being widely advertised everywhere,’ Daria explained.
The blogger squashed fears of ‘wiretapping’ and being listened to while at the resort, and admitted she ‘wasn’t afraid’ of the possibility ‘because we have nothing to say that would make someone scold us for it’.
She recalled how they were rarely left alone during the trip and explained the reasoning behind it.
‘The fact that you are accompanied everywhere, yes, that happens,’ Daria confirmed.
‘Even on the beach, there was someone walking with us, but it didn’t look like some kind of convoy, it looked more like sweet concern, they’re walking, they’ll chat with you, they’ll just walk behind you, that is, they’ll argue somehow that we’re worried about you getting lost or something.’
Though there was instances when Daria managed to be alone at the resort, in the middle of the night.
‘We left the hotel on our own, walked near the hotel even at night, at 2am, walked along the beach on our own, that is, and somehow there were no problem,’ she said.
As for the cuisine, Daria revealed there was a selection of places to eat at the retreat and she was served a range of different dishes.
‘They took us to various restaurants both in the resort area and in Kinyan, and they always wanted to surprise us,’ she shared.
‘They really adapted to all our interests, there were a lot of types of meat, there was duck, rabbit, different types of fish, they really tried to please us.’
The buildings surrounding the resort impressed the blogger and she described the ‘very cool infrastructure’.
‘Four kilometres of coastline with white sand have been built. New houses, and new buildings have been built,’ she said, recalling the ‘good decoration’ and ‘fountains’ inside the hotels.
It comes after North Korea barred foreign tourists from entering its newly opened holiday resort.
The abrupt reversal came only days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the site on July 12, where he was hosted by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who described Lavrov as the resort’s ‘first foreign guest.’
North Korea’s official tourism website, DRP Korea Tour, announced on Wednesday that foreign visitors are ‘temporarily not accepted,’ at the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Area, without providing a reason for the restriction.
When the resort was first opened, Kim was photographed standing on a sandy beach alongside his daughter and presumed heir Kim Ju Ae.
Russia remains the only country whose citizens have been permitted entry since North Korea relaxed its pandemic-era border restrictions.
A Russian travel agency had reportedly scheduled two additional group tours for August.
