North Korea officially opened a massive beach resort on its east coast to the public, state-run media reported Wednesday, with Russian guests expected to soon arrive. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called the completion of the resort one of the country’s “greatest successes this year.” Photo by KCNA/EPA-EFE
North Korea opened a massive beach resort on its east coast to the public, state-run media said Wednesday, with Russian guests expected to start arriving next week.
The Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area officially opened on Tuesday, Korean Central News Agency reported, welcoming its first domestic visitors from around the country.
The resort’s 2.5-mile-long beach was filled with guests “bathing in the clean and blue East Sea, taking high-speed boats, driving motorcycles on silver-colored sandy beach and having photos taken with joy and optimism of enjoying the best coastal tourist civilization before anyone else,” KCNA reported.
Guests at the “world-class” facility also enjoyed slides and other water park amusements, the report said.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called the completion of the resort one of the country’s “greatest successes this year.”
“The Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area should play a leading role in establishing the tourist culture of the DPRK,” he said, using the official name for North Korea.
Launched in 2014, the sprawling Wonsan tourist zone was initially slated to open in April 2019 but faced numerous setbacks, including international sanctions on materials and COVID-19 pandemic closures. The facility features houses, hotels and hostels for nearly 20,000 people.
International tourism offers a chance for the sanctions-hit North to earn foreign currency, but visitors have been almost nonexistent since Pyongyang sealed its borders at the start of the pandemic in January 2020.
Russia’s TASS news agency reported last week that the first group of Russian tourists would depart for the resort on July 7. Their eight-day vacation package also includes a visit to key attractions in Pyongyang, TASS said.
The two countries have expanded their military and economic ties over the past year, highlighted by Pyongyang supplying troops and weapons to Moscow for its war against Ukraine.
Russian travelers were the first to return to North Korea post-COVID, when an Air Koryo passenger flight arrived from Vladivostok early last year. Direct rail service between Pyongyang and Moscow also resumed last week.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry estimated that only a small number of Russian tourists will be able to visit the resort, however. Up to 170 Russians can arrive each day on existing flight routes, the ministry estimated, according to news agency Yonhap.
In February, a handful of Western travel agencies began offering small group tours to Rason, a special economic zone in the northeast of the country near the borders of China and Russia. However, North Korea abruptly halted the visits after less than three weeks.
The United States last month extended its ban on travel to North Korea for the ninth year in a row, citing “imminent danger” posed by any trips to the authoritarian state.
