North Korea opens beach resort in tourism push : NPR

This photo provided on July 2, 2025 by the North Korean government shows a seaside resort in the coastal tourist area of ​​Wonsan-Kalma Eastern on July 1, 2025.

Korean central press agency / Korea News Service via AP

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Korean central press agency / Korea News Service via AP

Seoul, South Korea – When President Trump met the head of North Korea, Kim Jong one for a historic summit in 2018, he tried to show a future northern pink that Korea could aspire.

“For example, they have large beaches. You see that each time they explode their cannons in the ocean,” Trump told journalists. “I said, you know, instead of doing it, you might have the best hotels in the world there.”

Nuclear negotiations between Trump and Kim collapsed, but a version of Trump’s imagination has come true. This week, a SPLASHY complex opened in the city of Wonsan on the eastern sea of ​​North Korea.

The coastal tourist area of ​​Wonsan Kalma extends to the 2.5 mile beach in the Kalma peninsula. The shore is bordered by 400 buildings, including high height hotels and villas which can accommodate around 20,000 people, according to the North Korean media. The area also has cultural and commercial equipment such as a water park, a gym, a concert hall, a restaurant, a car store, a car wash, a beer room and a large store.

Analysts say that the opening of this luxury complex shows that Pyongyang continues economic prosperity as well as – not instead of – military ambitions and a recluse dictatorship.

“A global destination”

North Korea has tested missiles in the same city of Wonsan as recently in May. Even if Kim Jong One said he wanted it to become a “global destination”, there is no indication that the station will be open to most foreign tourists.

Since his first years as a leader, Kim has been pressure for tourism as a means of stimulating the economy of sanctions in his country, because tourism is one of the few legitimate sources of foreign currency income for North Korea. He also wants the industry to stimulate growth in remote regions which are far behind the Pyongyang capital.

But the continuous military advances in North Korea and the deepening of isolation attenuated this reader.

Even as a marquee project, the Kalma tourist area has taken almost a decade to build in the midst of international sanctions and the locking of the pandemic. After inaugurating in 2016, its initial deadline of 2018 was delayed several times.

The complex began to receive domestic tourists on Tuesday, but it is not clear if they will be the kind of economic stimulants for the hopes of the regime. North Korea restricts freedom of movement and suffers from persistent economic difficulties, with around 60% of North Koreans estimated be in poverty.

The country is always reluctant to allow foreign tourists. Earlier this year, North Korea has let a group of Western tourists enter for the first time since it closed its borders during the start of the pandemic cochem in 2020, to stop suddenly after three weeks without explaining why.

The groups of tourists from China, who made up most foreign travelers visiting North Korea Pré-Pandemic, have not yet returned.

Will the Russians come?

The only exception to the tourist break was the Russians, with whom North Korea quickly increased exchanges and cooperation since the two countries signed a mutual defense treaty in 2024.

The Russians will probably also be the first foreign visitors to the new station. North Korea invited the Russian ambassador Aleksandr Matsegora as a special guest of last week ceremony celebrating the completion of the station. Russian news agency Tass reported Last week, the first batch of Russian tourists will leave for Kalma next week.

But less than 900 Russians went to North Korea in 2024 for leisure, according to Russian customs data, against hundreds of thousands of Chinese tourists who have visited the country once.

The researcher Lee Sangkeun of the strategy of the think of think tank for the national security strategy based in Seoul notes Travelers in major Russian cities would not find North Korea an attractive destination that is worth long trip and strong restrictions and surveillance of foreign visitors.

Lee also underlines the bad infrastructure and the vulnerability of North Korea to geopolitical fluctuations as reasons of being skeptical about its tourist ambitions.

During the ceremony last week, Kim Jong One praised the “various and rich tourist resources and political stability and institutional sustainability” of his country. He promised to build additional additional tourist stations “based on success and experiences acquired in the development of Kalma”.