North Korea will open a beach resort with plans to allow foreign visitors

National Post

4 hours ago

Article content
In February this year, a small group of international tourists visited North Korea for the first time in five years, but tourist agencies said in March that their tours to North Korea were paused.
Article content
Article content
Kim's recent foreign policy prioritizes relations with Russia as he's been supplying troops and conventional weapons to support its war against Ukraine in return for economic and military assistance. But North Korea's ties with China, which has long been its biggest trading partner and aid benefactor, have apparently cooled as China is reluctant to join an anti-Western alliance with North Korea and Russia, analysts say.
Article content
Tuesday's ceremony that marked the completion of the resort's construction drew the Russian ambassador to North Korea and his embassy staff, KCNA said. But it didn't say whether any Chinese diplomats were also invited.
Article content
'There seems to be issues that North Korea hasn't yet resolved in its relations with China. But North Korea has put in too much money on tourism and plans to spend more. Subsequently, to get its money's worth, North Korea can't help receiving Chinese tourists,' Lee Sangkeun, an expert at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea's intelligence agency.
Article content
Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, also said that foreign tourism to the Wonsan-Kalma site will begin with Russians. But he said Chinese tours to the zone, a sort of civilian exchange, will also begin soon, adding bilateral trade between China and North Korea has been recovering.
Article content
Article content
Lim said that South Korean and American tours to North Korea won't likely restart anytime soon, though both new liberal South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and U.S. President Donald Trump have expressed hopes to revive dialogue with North Korea.
Article content
In January when Trump boasted about his ties with Kim, he said 'I think he has tremendous condo capabilities. He's got a lot of shoreline,' a likely reference to Wonsan-Kalma.
Article content
North Korea hasn't publicly responded to Trump's outreach. It has repeatedly rejected Washington and Seoul's dialogue offers and focused on expanding its nuclear weapons program since Kim's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.
Article content