The North Korean government has opened the Wonsan Kalma beach resort, the biggest tourist-specific site in the country.
The resort had its grand opening on Tuesday and opens for domestic tourism next Tuesday, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The Wonsan Kalma resort includes multiple hotels, facilities for leisure, sports and dining, plus a water park. The resort can accommodate almost 20,000 people according to KCNA.
The tourist area was purportedly the brainchild of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who in 2018 heard President Trump pitch the idea of developing beachfront property in the communist country.
“The transformation of the Wonsan Kalma area, a great auspicious event of the whole country, is a brilliant fruition of the profound thinking and inexhaustible efforts of the respected Comrade Kim Jong-un, who unfolded a grand blueprint for building a world-class cultural resort and saw to it that all the architectural structures were perfectly built,” according to the KCNA.
In addition to domestic tourism, North Korea is also open to visitors from Russia. Officials for the Primorsky region of eastern Russia said the country’s first tour to the Wonsan Kalma resort is scheduled for July 7, reported The Associated Press.
Restrictions on tourists from other countries were briefly lifted and reimposed this year, according to the BBC.
People involved in tours of North Korea said other attractions will still be the main magnet for international visitors as opposed to the new resort.
“I was hoping this might signal a broader reopening to international tourism, but unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. … Key sites like Pyongyang, the DMZ [demilitarized zone] and other brutalist or communist landmarks will continue to be the main highlights for international visitors once broader tourism resumes,” Rowan Beard, co-founder of Young Pioneer Tours, told the BBC.
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