There is only one Benidorm. Or not. At a time when international tourism is gaining strength again and approaching pre-pandemic levels, and important destinations such as Spain and Japan are breaking foreign visitor records, a new actor is emerging who wants to get a share of the cake in the field of tourism: North Korea.

As complicated as it was to travel to Pyonyang from most of the planet, Kim Jong-un decided to create a major tourist city in Kangwon province, washed by the Sea of ​​Japan, that could accommodate tens of thousands of travelers. . And he did this using a well-known reference: the Spanish Costa Blanca. This is not just an idea or a common project on the table. After years of work and several delays, Kim wants to launch in May 2025.

Welcome to Wonsan-Kalma. The project is not new, but it is facing a crucial phase after years of delay. In 2014, Kim Jong-un, barely fresh from becoming general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), announced an ambitious plan to turn Wonsan, a municipality on the east coast, into a major “tourist city.” His ideas for the entire Kalma Peninsula were certainly ambitious and included, among other things, an underwater hotel.

Statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in Wonsan.

A complicated calendar. The target was to open the new tourist area in April 2020, but international sanctions and aggravated material shortages due to the pandemic caused the schedule to change. Until today. In July, after Kim visited the Wonsan-Kalma “tourist area” with senior North Korean government officials, the country’s state news agency KCNA announced that the coastal city would open in just over a year, in May 2025. It is decided by the Central Committee of the Labor Party.

Although it more or less corresponds to history, the fact is that satellite images taken by Planet Labs reveal that the tourist complex was already developed, at least on the exterior, with buildings, shops, parking lots, paved streets and even beach chairs. . At the beginning of the year, sites in Russia were offered for a tour that included stops in Pyongyang, a ski resort on the east coast, in what was announced as the first trip to North Korea for foreign visitors since the start of the pandemic. ..and flights to Wonsan beach.

So what’s Wonsan-Kalma like? We gradually learn the details of the project from the international press, North Korea-focused media and websites specializing in tourism. For example, NK News assures that the Wonsan-Kalma Beach Resort complex will cover an area of ​​​​about 245 hectares and will have a 5.5 km beach, buildings and thousands of hotel rooms. Considering the number of foreign tourists the country received before the pandemic, a capacity of 100 thousand visitors is mentioned, which is a considerable number.

Well known by Kim Jong-un. The area is almost as interesting as the project itself. Wonsan is connected to an airport, the Kalma terminal, and it is not strange that Kim retires there to rest. In the spring of 2020, amid speculation about the North Korean leader’s health, Reuters uncovered signs that he was with his entourage in Wonsan. “This is one of his favorite houses,” an expert assured the agency, comparing Kim’s affinity for Wonsan to Donald Trump’s affinity for Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

The area is also known for another feature that doesn’t sit well with tourist success: North Korean officials have used the eastern coastal area of ​​Wonsan to test ballistic missiles. In 2020, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that two projectiles were launched from Wonsan, about 180 kilometers from Seoul.

Neither one nor the other prevented the tourism project from encountering significant difficulties. And not just because of the delays in implementation that have dragged on in recent years. In 2023, international media revealed that at least some of the buildings in the tourist complex were occupied by homeless people.

Is North Korea Benidorm? It is no coincidence that the Wonsan-Kalma tourism project has earned the nickname “North Korea Benidorm” in both national and foreign media. In early 2017, at an early stage of the project, Pyongyang sent 16 officials to Spain to collect ideas that could then be handed over to Wonsan. This is according to the Reuters agency, which states that the North Korean delegation visited the Marina d’Or tourist complex and the Terra Mitica theme park in Benidorm. “They saw these places with their own eyes and recorded some of them,” the country’s diplomats said at the time.

During his visit to Wonsan in July, Kim insisted that “services” would be one of the keys to the complex’s success, as well as its construction. “During the meeting, issues that would guarantee the operation of the region, such as guaranteeing the park, building an amusement park and entertainment area, or waste treatment, were discussed,” KCNA said.

hunting tourists. The construction of the “North Korean Benidorm” may be gimmicky, but it is part of a broader Pyongyang strategy focused on international tourism, a valuable source of foreign currency. At the end of August, the regime announced that after closing its borders in 2020 to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the country would reopen those borders to foreign tourism.

Kim Jong-un himself has also shown interest in receiving visitors from “friendly” countries China and Russia. Actually Guard He notes that the first travelers probably would not have gone to Wonsan, but would have been limited to Samjiyon near the Chinese border. Both China and Russia are two interesting markets for North Korea. Before the pandemic, about 90 percent of tourists visiting Kim Jon-un’s country came from the Asian giant.

talking about numbers. Looking at the numbers, it is estimated that North Korea received approximately 300,000 foreign visitors in 2019, and these visitors earned an income between 90 and 150 million dollars. The flow of tourists to the north, beyond tourism from China or Russia, was limited even before the emergence of Covid-19. It is said that there will be only 5,000 Western visitors a year. In fact, the United States was a sensitive part of this market until Washington vetoed this goal in 2017 following the dramatic death (and diplomatic conflict) of student Otto Warmbier.

Images |Maksim Shutov (Unsplash), Ryan Chan (Flickr) and Wikipedia

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