Andrew Salmon | June 29, 2025
(The Washington Times) — The opening of a ritzy beach resort in North Korea is puzzling pundits.
The impressive scale and apparent high quality of the resort are raising questions about the economy of the heavily sanctioned and supposedly poverty-stricken North Korea, which is only now reopening its borders after the onset of the COVID pandemic.
It also raises questions about its intended clientele. Although foreign tourists with hard currency might form a small sector of the visitor base, experts say the majority are likely to be locals.
Come to Kalma, Comrades
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, accompanied by daughter Kim Ju Ae and wife Ri Sol-ju, oversaw the opening of the Kalma Resort on Tuesday, according to state media reports released Thursday and monitored by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
Kalma, a 2.5-mile-long beach, is along the scenic Wonsan Bay on the country’s east coast, some 58 miles north of the Demilitarized Zone.
One image from North Korea’s state media showed the Kims seated next to a swimming pool, watching as a comrade splashed down a water slide.
In another, Mr. Kim — not quite beach-ready in a black suit — cut a ribbon on the terrace of a balconied resort building.
An overview showed high-rise buildings and low-rise, Mediterranean-style, red-roofed villas lining a spotless white beach dotted with umbrellas.
Kalma, served by an airport and two rail stations, is scheduled to open Tuesday and “should play a leading role in establishing the tourist culture” of North Korea, Mr. Kim said, per reports.
Wonsan has a long history as a tourist site. It was patronized by some of the first expatriates to live in Korea in the early 20th century.
Mr. Kim’s late father, Kim Jong-il, moored his luxury yacht in the bay.
That vessel was visited by U.S. basketball star Dennis Rodman, whose entourage was the first to report that the Kims had a daughter.
South Korean media commentary focused on the public reappearance of Mr. Kim’s wife for the first time in a year and a half. Some speculate that Mr. Kim is pushing his teenage daughter to the fore to promote her eventual succession as the nation’s first female leader.
Attention also focused on Ms. Ri’s Gucci handbag. Speculation suggests that with luxury imports to North Korea sanctioned, the bag perhaps entered the country via diplomatic channels.
Notable guests at the ceremony were Russian diplomats, indicating Russians may be targeted as visitors.
The two countries share a border, and relations have soared since the signing of a 2024 bilateral alliance that has North Korean troops fighting for Russia against Ukraine.
Tourist troubles
In addition to Kalma, Mr. Kim has overseen the construction of a water park in Pyongyang, a ski resort at Masikryong and a mountain resort at the country’s near-sacred Mount Paekdu. Luxury apartments have sprouted up in Pyongyang.
The source of the money and materials for those grandiose projects is a mystery.
“The North Korean economy is a total enigma — even I don’t understand it,” said Moon Chung-in, an academic who has advised the three South Korean administrations that summited with North Korea. “During COVID, North Korea was building all kinds of apartment complexes at an amazing pace, but we don’t know how they got these construction materials.”
Mr. Moon, who joined all South Korean presidential delegations to North Korea, said he guessed some were imported from China, though even that is questionable, given border closures during COVID.
“There are so many unknowns,” he said.
Another question is the intended users of the projects. Mr. Moon said Chinese, Russians and Southeast Asian tourists are likely targets.
Chinese media reported that some 200,000 residents visited North Korea in 2018, but it is not clear how many came in on day tours by bus. Kalma is far from China border crossings.
From 1998 to 2016, South Koreans surged into special tourism and investment zones just north of the DMZ, but bilateral relations are now frozen.
Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Kookmin University, said he doubted North Korea’s international tourism potential beyond niche markets, such as a handful of adventurous Westerners and, more recently, Russian soldiers recuperating from wounds sustained in Ukraine.
“North Korean officials don’t understand how modern international tourism — luxury or mass market — operates,” he said. “They don’t understand that their country is quite poor in tourist resources.”
Unreliable and infrequent transportation is an issue. Inflexible and carefully chaperoned itineraries, as well as problematic internet and mobile communications, are others.
“On top of that, they probably don’t understand how bad their international reputation is,” Mr. Lankov said.
A South Korean tourist was fatally shot in 2008, and a U.S. tourist who had been detained was returned home in a coma and died in 2017.
All that suggests locals will be key to North Korea’s tourism ambitions.
Keeping loyalists loyal
Mr. Kim took office in 2012 after studying overseas. That experience likely inspired him to offer upmarket leisure options to fortify the loyalty of his elite.
“When he was fresh from Switzerland, he understood that the lives of his subjects were not full of excitement, so he was going to offer them necessary facilities,” Mr. Lankov said. “He paid a lot of attention to all kinds of leisure activities.”
Within North Korea’s “songbun” hierarchy are, broadly, the loyal class, the wavering class and the hostile class.
Loyalists make up about 23% of the population, and the top 1% are the super elite who run the country, said Robert Collins, author of a 2012 book on songbun, “Marked for Life.”
“They are pretty loyal, as they get a lot of privileges,” he noted.
Mr. Kim also needs to secure the loyalties of a new kind of North Korean, who arose in the mid-1990s as a survival response to the collapse of the socialist state distribution system: The entrepreneurial “donju” (“money masters”).
Not a class per se, early donju undertook cross-border trade with China and jump-started basic jangmadang markets. Those bazaars started as black markets but became so critical to the economy that they are now standard.
In the past decade, many donju have shifted from trading to investing in consumer goods manufacturing to satisfy domestic demand.
However, they are not forming a middle class that could make demands of or threaten the regime. They need patronage.
“The donju have the wherewithal to succeed by striving hard, but corruption usually has a lot to do with it,” Mr. Collins said.
“A person in the wavering class can succeed if they have initiative and the access to corrupt the right officials or police.”
