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North Korea's new tourist zone off-limits to foreigners amid Russia flights boost
North Korea has blocked foreigners from visiting a recently opened beach resort, the country's tourist office announced this week, only days after Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the area.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's favourite project, a vast coastal resort on the country's east coast, opened to domestic guests earlier this month to much fanfare in official media.
The Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone, nicknamed 'North Korea's Waikiki' by South Korean media, seems to be lined with high-rise hotels and waterparks and can reportedly accommodate up to 20,000 people.
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Previously, state media reported that Russian tour groups will visit Wonsan in the following months.
But following Lavrov's visit, the North's National Tourism Administration said 'foreign tourists are temporarily not being accepted' without giving further details, in a statement posted on an official website this week.
Kim showed a keen interest in developing North Korea's tourism industry during his early years in power, analysts have said, and the coastal resort area was a particular focus.
He said ahead of the opening of the beach resort that the construction of the site would go down as 'one of the greatest successes this year' and that the North would build more large-scale tourist zones 'in the shortest time possible'.
The North last year permitted Russian tourists to return for the first time since the pandemic and Western tour operators briefly returned in February this year.
Seoul's unification ministry, however, said that it expected international tourism to the new resort was 'likely to remain small in scale' given the limited capacity of available flights.
Kim held talks with Lavrov in Wonsan last week where he offered Moscow his full and 'unconditional' support for its war in Ukraine, KCNA reported.
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Lavrov reportedly hailed the seaside project as a 'good tourist attraction', adding it would become popular among both local and Russian visitors looking for new destinations.
Ahead of Lavrov's recent visit, Russia announced that it would begin twice-a-week flights between Moscow and Pyongyang.
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