North Korea opens beach resort, expects tourists next week
The North Korean government has officially opened the Wonsan Kalma beach resort, the country's largest tourism-focused facility.
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.
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