Seoul (AFP) – North Korea opened a massive resort area on its east coast, state media said Wednesday, with the tourism pet project of leader Kim Jong Un reportedly set to welcome Russian guests later this month.
Dubbed "North Korea's Waikiki" by South Korean media, the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area can accommodate nearly 20,000 people, according to Pyongyang, which previously described it as "a world-class cultural resort".
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.
The tourist zone opened to domestic visitors Tuesday, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency reported, publishing images of tourists in colourful swimsuits enjoying the beach.
North Koreans of all ages from across the country flocked to the site this week "filled with joy at experiencing a new level of civilization", KCNA reported.
The visitors were "astonished by the grandeur and splendor of the tourist city, where more than 400... artistically designed buildings lined the white sandy beach in ideal harmony", it added.
According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, a group of Russian tourists is set to visit the zone in North Korea for the first time on July 7.
South Korea's unification ministry, which manages relations with the North, said the site's operations are "expected to gradually expand", including to Russian tourists.
Kim said last week 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".
Previously released images showed him sitting in a chair -- alongside his teenage daughter Ju Ae and wife Ri Sol Ju -- watching a man flying off a water slide in the resort.
But given the limited capacity of available flights, international tourism to the new beach resort is "likely to remain small in scale," according to Seoul's unification ministry.
"It is estimated that tourists will travel via Pyongyang, and that the number of visitors may be limited to around 170 people per day," the ministry said.
North Korea sees tourism as a key source of foreign currency, it said, and Pyongyang may have received aid to complete the site from Russia in exchange for joining its war in Ukraine.
The nuclear-armed North reopened its borders in August 2023 after almost four years, having closed them because of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which even its own nationals were prevented from entering.
But foreign tourism was limited even before the pandemic, with tour companies saying around 5,000 Western tourists visited each year. Significantly more Chinese tourists were allowed at the time.
The impoverished country's political, military and cultural ties with Russia have deepened since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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. No Chinese tourists are known to have returned to the country.
A tourist train between Rason -- home to North Korea's first legal marketplace -- and Russia's Vladivostok resumed in May this year, according to an official from Seoul's unification ministry.
US citizens made up about 20 percent of the market before Washington banned travel following the imprisonment and subsequent death of American student Otto Warmbier.
Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans also used to visit Mount Kumgang near the inter-Korean border every year, travelling to a Seoul-funded tourist resort that was the first major cooperation project between the neighbours.
The trips came to an abrupt end in 2008 when a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist who strayed off the approved path and Seoul suspended travel.