North Korea ready to open its largest tourist site, although it still blocks foreigners
/ AP
The next week of North Korea will open a characteristic coastal tourist site that, he says, will mark the beginning of a new era in its tourism industry, although it is not known when the country will open again for foreign visitors.
The coastal tourist area of Wonsan-Kalma has hotels and other accommodations for almost 20,000 guests that can swim in the sea, participate in sports and recreational activities and eat in restaurants and coffee shops on the site, state media said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong toured the site and reduced the inaugural film in a luxurious ceremony on Tuesday, the official Corean Corean news agency reported Thursday.
Kim said that its construction would be recorded as “one of the best successes this year” and described the site “The Proud First Step” to carry out the government’s policy to develop tourism, according to Kcna.
North Korea will open the site to national tourists first
The Wonsan-Kalma Beach Resort is the largest tourist site in North Korea. Kcna said that North Korea will begin the service for national tourists next Tuesday. He did not say when North Korea will begin to receive foreign tourists, but Russian officials later said Thursday that the first Russian tour will occur in July.
The observers say that the complex probably required a large investment of the limited budget of North Korea, so eventually Chinese tourists and other foreigners will eventually accept to reach the balance point.
Kim has been pressing to make the country a tourist center as part of the efforts to revive the sick economy, and the Wonsan-Kalma area is one of its most commented tourism projects. Kcna reported that North Korea will confirm the plans to build large tourist sites in other parts of the country.
But North Korea has not completely raised the prohibition of foreign tourists imposed in early 2020 to protect against the Covid-19 pandemic. Experts say that North Korea has taken to resume their international tourism due to pandemics restriction, an outbreak of Tensions with the United States and South Korea In recent years and concerns about Western tourists who spread a negative image of their system.
Russian tourists wait soon
The Russian Primorsky region, which limits with North Korea, said that the first group of Russian tourists to resort will leave on July 7. The region’s press service said that during their eight -day trip, Russian tourists will also have the opportunity to visit the main attractions in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, according to the Russian state agency Tass.
As of February 2024, North Korea has already been accepting Russian tourists to other areas in the middle of The booming military and other associations between the two countries, but Chinese group tours, which represented more than 90% of visitors before the pandemic, remain stagnant.
In February of this year, a small group of international tourists visited North Korea for the first time in five years, but the tourist agencies said in March that their tours to North Korea were arrested.
Kim’s recent foreign policy prioritizes relations with Russia, since it has been providing conventional troops and weapons for Support his war against Ukraine in exchange for economic and military assistance. But the ties of North Korea with China, which for a long time has been its largest commercial partner and benefactor of help, have apparently cooled since China is reluctant to join an anti-western alliance with North Korea and Russia, according to analysts.
The Tuesday ceremony that marked the completion of the construction of the resort attracted the Russian ambassador to North Korea and his embassy staff, Kcna said. But he did not say if Chinese diplomats were also invited.
“There seems to be problems that North Korea has not yet solved in its relations with China. But North Korea has put too much money on tourism and plans to spend more. Subsequently, to obtain the value of its money, North Korea cannot help receive Chinese tourists,” Lee Sangkeun, an expert at the National Security Strategy Institute, a Think Tank directed by the South Korean intelligence agency.
Lim Eul-Chul, a professor at the Institute of Studies of the East of the University of Kyungnam in Seoul, also said that foreign tourism to Wonsan-Kalma site will begin with the Russians. But he said that Chinese tours in the area, a kind of civil exchange, will also begin soon, adding that the bilateral trade between China and North Korea has been recovering.
It is likely that South Korean and American tours will probably not happen soon
Lim said South Korean and American tours to North Korea will probably not restart in the short term, although both the new South Korean liberal president Lee Jae Myung and the president of the United States Trump have expressed hope of reviving dialogue with North Korea.
In January, when Trump boasted of his ties with Kim, he said: “I think he has tremendous condominium capabilities. He has a lot of coast,” a probable reference to Wonsan-Kalma.
North Korea has not responded publicly within the reach of Trump. He has repeatedly rejected Washington and Seoul dialogue offers and has focused on expanding his nuclear weapons program since Kim’s high -risk nuclear diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.
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