by Kim Jong-Un officially opened a new tourist city on the east coast of North Korea on Tuesday.
The Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone has hotels and accommodations to accommodate almost 20,000 guests as well as restaurants and leisure facilities, including a water park, according to the North Korean state media.
While the area is officially opened on July 1st, Kim and his wife and daughter received an exclusive tour on which they were shown in some hotel rooms and brought to the promenade that runs along the part of the 4 km long beach.
The film material shared by State Media shows that Kim inspects the area from a terrace over several floors over the sea level while he smiles and speaks to his helpers.
According to State Media, the Wonsan-Kalma website “would be one of the greatest successes this year” and “play a leading role in the establishment of the tourist culture in North Korea”.
Although it will be open to domestic visitors from next week, it is unclear whether it will welcome foreign tourists.
In February, a small group of international tourists visited the country – the first in five years since the pandemic – but shortly after the authorized tourist agencies would suspend visits again.
According to the state media, Kim, who previously pushed to transform his country into a tourism center, announced the location of Wonsan-Kalma as the “first step” in the development of “cultural tourism” in the country.
One of the reasons why Wonsan was selected as a location was that it was less than two hours from China, Russia and Japan in the air.
However, Wonsan-Kalma Airport, which will open the area in 2015, only began in 2018, and the first plans state that the facilities could accommodate up to 100,000 people.
The site where several facilities in the Korean People’s Army were previously opened was to be opened in April 2019 due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
There are also reports that there are plans to set up similar holiday destinations “in various regions in the shortest possible time”, the report says.
