North Korea hopes new luxury resort would raise a ‘wave of happiness’, but visitors aren’t even allowed to trickle in

SINGAPORE: Maybe Kim Jong Un is a firm believer in “If you build it, they will come.” That certainly seems to be the philosophy behind the luxurious Wonsan-Kalma resort, which is said to be the North Korean leader’s answer to Hawaii’s Waikiki beach, famous the world over.

Well, it took several years to build, but it’s finally open. Whether the Supreme Leader will actually allow the need for tourist dollars and a burnished reputation for his country is another story altogether.

Reports say there has only been a sparse smattering of Russian tourists, the only foreigners allowed to enter the country at the moment, who have visited Wonsan-Kalma.

In June, Mr Kim and his family were at the resort, which is part of the larger Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone. Incidentally, it is also the area where the Supreme Leader grew up. The state-run KCNA news agency reported that officials are hoping that as many as 20,000 people will visit per year. In one recent visit featured in a CNN report, there were barely more than a dozen guests.

The country’s leader had “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 Guardian quoted KCNA as saying.

Mr Kim added that the area would “play a leading role in establishing the tourist culture” of North Korea, except that tourists are not yet welcome.

CNN’s Sep 2 report quoted a Russian woman as saying that there were a total of 15 Russian tourists in the vast hotel during her visit. She added that she and her countrymen were allowed in the international zone of the hotel, and they could see but not enter an aqua park nearby, as only locals could go in. Additionally, their visit was tightly controlled in the wake of influencers from the West showing too much of local daily life when they were allowed to visit the country earlier this year.

Apart from Russians, foreigners are no longer issued visas to North Korea.

Anastasia Samsonova, who also visited the resort, told the BBC that she “enjoyed a vacation without people” where everything was “new, spotless, and immaculate”.

In an Instagram post, Daria, another Russian tourist, wrote, “If you’re tired of Asia, Turkey, etc., and want something exotic — this is it.”

She underlined that the resort was “very raw” and “not the kind of vacation Russian tourists are used to”.

“For now, what you see in Pyongyang and Wonsan is for show — a message to the world that they can be modern, even while the doors stay shut, “ Swedish traveller Johan Nylander, who has been to North Korea twice and who ran in a marathon in the country’s capital earlier this year, told CNN. /TISG

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