Kim Jong Un has unveiled North Korea’s glitzy new beach resort, touring the development with his wife and daughter, in what is a rare appearance for the dictator’s spouse.
The hermit kingdom completed construction on the massive tourist resort, which boasts colourful water slides, swimming pools, high-rise hotels and rows of sunbeds, state media reported on Thursday.
Development plans for the Wonsan resort have mushroomed since they were first announced in 2014.
The holiday destination is a pet project for Kim, but has taken almost six years longer than scheduled to complete after the country was hit hard by the Covid pandemic.
Kim was an enthusiastic visitor this week to the sprawling site on the isolated country’s east coast, which is set to open its doors on July 1 to domestic tourists and maybe one day foreign ones.
Analysts have said Kim showed a keen interest in developing North Korea’s tourism industry in his early years in power, with the development of the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area known to be a key focal point.
The nuclear-armed North reopened its borders in August 2023 after almost four years, having closed them because of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which time even its own nationals were prevented from entering.
Foreign tourism was limited though even before the pandemic, with tour companies saying around 5,000 Western tourists visited each year.
Kim on Tuesday attended a lavish inaugural ceremony for the tourist zone, which hosts accommodation for nearly 20,000 people and what Pyongyang claims is ‘a world-class cultural resort’, the Korean Central News Agency said.
‘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’, the news outlet added.
Photos released by state media showed Kim and his family sitting and watching as a man flies off a water slide.
Wonsan Kalma houses ‘sea-bathing service facilities, various sports and recreation facilities’ and is ‘equipped with all conditions… for providing the beauty of the scenic spot on the east coast in all seasons’, according to KCNA.
Kim, with ‘great satisfaction’, said the construction of the site would go down as ‘one of the greatest successes this year’ and that the North would build more large-scale tourist zones ‘in the shortest time possible’, it added.
Kim was joined by his daughter, Ju Ae, who is considered by many experts to be his likely successor.
He was also accompanied by his wife, Ri Sol Ju, who has not been seen for 17 months.
South Korean media reported, based on images released by Pyongyang, that Ju Ae appears to be wearing a Cartier watch – despite such a high-end item being banned from import into North Korea under UN sanctions, imposed in response to the country’s nuclear and missile activities.
The North last year permitted Russian tourists to return for the first time since Covid and Western tour operators returned in February this year.
Foreign tourists wanting to visit the super secretive North Korea can only do so under a supervised tour, through which guides have complete control over visitors will see.
Russia and North Korea have agreed to expand cooperation on tourism, restarting a direct passenger train service between their capitals for the first time since 2020.
North Korea’s Benidorm-style beach resort has been the dictator’s most talked about tourism project since plans for its development were announced in 2015.
Boasting 150 buildings, the resort is set to be one of the largest single-operator beach resorts in the world.
Plans previously showed that the resort would accommodate up to 100,000 visitors at a time.
Kim’s inspiration for the resort came after his officials were left ‘amazed’ during a research trip to Spain’s Costa Blanca in 2017.
