North Korea’s plans to “revitalize international tourism” will be aimed at tourists from “friendly” nations, leader Kim Jong Un reportedly said, visiting a tourism hub near the country’s tallest mountain on the China border.

Kim’s comments at the Mount Paektu area raise questions about a potential restart of Chinese tourism and the DPRK’s continued ban on Western tourism, as the country continues to keep its doors shut to all but select delegations and Russian tourists.

During his visit to the northern border last week, Kim laid out broad plans to rebuild the Samjiyon Airport, turn a military ski base into a new ski resort and build new railways, hotels and other amenities for foreign tourists and domestic ideology-focused trips to the “holy” Mount Paektu, according to state media. 

He inspected the area from July 11 to 12, the Korean Central News Agency reported.

The report also said Kim purged at least one high-level official and ordered others to be “reviewed” by authorities for corruption and other perceived failures in construction and design at projects in Samjiyon.

ONLY FRIENDS, PLEASE

North Korea lifted its COVID-19-related total border closure one year ago, indicating Kim Jong Un no longer feared that the virus would cause a national health emergency, but the country has yet to reopen to pre-pandemic-scale foreign tourism despite allowing in select groups of Russian tourists, Chinese business people and various foreign delegations.

Now, Kim appears to have confirmed suspicions that the reason for this is down to political concerns, saying during his time near the Chinese border last week that “friendly” foreigners will be prioritized for tourism.

The DPRK leader “said there is no doubt that the Mount Paektu Cultural Resort Area that we are planning for unconditional completion in the near future will surely become a tourist zone where friendly foreign friends can feel a unique attraction,” according to KCNA.

The Mount Paektu-Samjiyon zone will become a “four-season mountainous tourist area to meet the cultural and emotional needs of the people on the highest level and revitalize international tourism.”

Amid Pyongyang’s apparent shunning of Chinese tour groups  — who made up the vast majority of foreign tourists before the pandemic — in favor of Russians, Kim’s mention of friendly visitors also suggests he may change his tune on allowing Chinese tourists back in the country in the near future.

It also casts doubt on the possibility North Korea will reopen tourism to Western companies anytime soon, which mostly brought in Europeans and others from English-speaking countries.

NEW CONSTRUCTION PLANS

As part of Kim’s plan to “make tourism a major driving force of regional development,” he mentioned new projects in the Mount Paektu-Samjiyon area such as “remodeling of Samjiyon Airport” and building a “large-scale ski resort within two years,” new hotels, rail lines and cable cars.

KCNA published a photo of Kim inspecting satellite images and design maps of Samjiyon and the airport, appearing to show plans to expand the airport with an additional parallel runway or taxiways. 

NK Pro previously reported on construction in 2021 of a new rail line to the airport, but Planet Labs satellite imagery shows work hadn’t started on the airport as of the time of Kim’s visit last week.

NK Pro analysis also shows the ski resort is set to be built at an existing military base that is home to Korean People’s Army (KPA) Unit 1045, a special unit Kim visited in 2016 that is often seen on state TV carrying rifles and conducting shooting drills while skiing.

The base, located near Mount Pukphothae, already boasts multiple ski slopes and a small ski lift. The slopes have been active in recent winters, with artificial snow put down to help train the KPA unit, while extensive new military infrastructure was also built from 2019 to 2020.

The replacement of the military base with a ski resort for tourists would mirror Kim’s boasts in recent years of building greenhouse farms on top of old air force bases, possibly meant to counter citizen concerns as he says he must prioritize military spending over civilian spending.

Kim also ordered the construction of new roads and rail lines to improve access to Mount Paektu — which Pyongyang’s propaganda falsely claims is the birthplace of former leader Kim Jong Il — after recently introducing new funicular cars there. The China-DPRK border runs through the center of the large lake in the crater at the mountain’s peak.

KCNA said the new transportation infrastructure is aimed at “improving convenience of climbing Mount Paektu and steadily intensifying the study tour of revolutionary battle sites” for North Koreans as part of ideology-focused trips organized by the state.

The DPRK leader praised other aspects of construction in the Samjiyon area in recent years, including remodeling the Samjiyon Revolutionary Museum and building dozens of new public facilities, apartment buildings and “extending 230-odd kilometers” of roads. 

NK Pro analysis of Planet Labs satellite imagery shows many of these new buildings in central Samjiyon were built rapidly since May, ahead of Kim’s visit.

Kim reportedly oversaw the large-scale rebuilding of central Samjiyon between 2017 and 2019, before declaring additional construction in small towns in surrounding areas complete in late 2021.

Meanwhile, China has been building a giant new customs complex on the border near Mount Paektu since late 2022, in another sign that Chinese tourists will be a primary target of the zone.

PURGES

Despite KCNA on Sunday saying Kim was satisfied with construction efforts in the Samjiyon area since 2020, a large part of the report focused on his anger at officials for “irresponsibility” and “serious deviations” in carrying out the projects.

“Going round the newly-built hotels for domestic tourists, [Kim] severely pointed out that their construction was carried out at an outdated and backward level contrary to the requirement of the developing times,” according to KCNA.

He said, “This problem badly affects the general long-term plan for the city development, bringing economic losses,” and ordered new buildings to be remodeled.

Photos showed him at the recently-built Pegaebong Hostel atop the mountain overlooking Samjiyon, and at the slightly older 300-room Ikkal Hostel and 500-room Ponnamu Hostel (formerly called Samjiyon Hotel).

Kim ordered the “suspension of rights” of Minister of State Construction Control Ri Sun Chol, calling him out by name and saying he and an unnamed former vice-minister of the ministry are  “good-for-nothing persons” who should be “immediately submitted to a law-enforcement organ for investigation.”

Ri “has never been to Samjiyon City since December last year when the completion inspection started,” Kim reportedly said, stating this “clearly shows that his ideological laxity and neglect of duty have reached the extremes.” He was only promoted to head of the ministry last September.

Kim ordered that an unnamed vice-premier of the Cabinet — likely Pak Hun, who joined Kim on the inspection — and “senior officials at the state designing organ should be certainly re-examined” by authorities as well for having “neglected the responsibility for duty on guiding the overall construction, while attaching importance only to the housing construction in Pyongyang.”

Kim also said a “vice-director of the Organizational Leadership Department of the WPK Central Committee who is in charge of the political group in the field of construction” should be “downgraded” and that “all members of the completion inspection committee under the Samjiyon City construction project headquarters” should stop their work and be put under questioning.

The DPRK leader has frequently lambasted top officials in public in recent years, deflecting blame for development problems while at the same time having state propaganda call him a “great genius of creation and construction and benevolent father of the people.”

However, he has also increasingly brought officials back to positions of power after completing their punishments.

NK Pro analysis suggests Kim is likely reasserting the importance of construction projects in Samjiyon to reinforce state propaganda around the “Paektu Bloodline” — the debunked myth of Kim Jong Il’s “revolutionary” birthplace used as the basis for his claim to power and his apparent plans to hand leadership to his child as the fourth generation of the North Korean Kim family hereditary dictatorship.

Edited by Alannah Hill