North Koreans swam, rode water park slides and enjoyed other water activities at a newly opened mammoth beach resort, state media reported yesterday, as the country largely maintains a ban on the entry of foreign tourists.
The tourism pet project of leader Kim Jong-un is reportedly set to welcome Russian guests later this month.
Dubbed “North Korea’s Waikiki” by South Korean media, the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area — a “world-class cultural resort” that Pyongyang said can accommodate nearly 20,000 people — is at the heart of leader Kim’s push to boost tourism as a way to improve his country’s struggling economy.
Photo: Korean Central News Agency / Korea News Service via AFP
However, prospects for the resort, the biggest tourist complex in North Korea, are unclear, as the country is unlikely to fully reopen its borders and embrace Western tourists anytime soon, observers said.
The tourist zone on Tuesday opened to domestic visitors, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported, publishing images of tourists in colorful swimsuits enjoying the beach.
“The guests’ hearts were filled with overwhelming emotion as they felt the astonishing new heights of our-style tourism culture blossoming under the era of the Workers’ Party,” KCNA said in a typical propaganda-driven dispatch.
Photo: Korean Central News Agency / Korea News Service via AP
The visitors were “astonished by the grandeur and splendor of the tourist city, where more than 400 ... artistically designed buildings lined the white sandy beach in ideal harmony,” it added.
A group of Russian tourists is set to visit the zone for the first time on Monday next week, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
At the inaugural ceremony last week, Kim said the site would be recorded as “one of the greatest successes this year,” calling its opening “the proud first step” toward realizing the government’s policy of developing tourism.
North Korea would build more large-scale tourist zones “in the shortest time possible,” he added.
Previously released images showed him sitting in a chair — alongside his teenage daughter Kim Ju-ae and wife, Ri Sol-ju — watching a man flying off a water slide at the resort.
North Korea sees tourism as a key source of foreign currency and Pyongyang might have received aid to complete the site from Russia in exchange for joining its war in Ukraine, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said.
Since 2022, North Korea has been slowly easing curbs imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and reopening its borders in phases, but the country has not said whether or when it would fully resume international tourism.
Chinese group tours, which made up more than 90 percent of visitors before the pandemic, remain stalled while there are questions about ties between the two communist neighbors.
In February, North Korea allowed a small group of international tourists to visit its northeastern border city of Rason, only to stop that tour program in less than a month.
Since February last year, it has been accepting Russian tourists amid expanding military cooperation between the countries, but Russian government records seen by South Korean experts show a little more than 2,000 Russians, only about 880 of them tourists, visited North Korea last year, a number that is too small to revive North Korea’s tourism.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
RSS