North Korea has appeared to wind down a short summer season of domestic group tours to the huge Wonsan Kalma beach resort for the second consecutive year, according to NK Pro analysis of satellite imagery.

It appears that authorities are mainly using the resort, which first opened last year, for positive internal propaganda and to motivate workers with the promise of reward trips. 

The country has been closed to foreign tourists since 2020, except for a few thousand Russian tourists per year — a fraction of whom are reportedly traveling to Wonsan Kalma.

Planet Labs imagery shows that the two main parking lots at the north and south ends of the three-mile-long beach resort, as well as parking areas in front of various hotels, were mostly empty throughout the year until they started to fill up in mid- to late-July. 

The number of vehicles in both lots began to dwindle around the end of August, pointing to a peak operation period of about 40 to 50 days. 

This is similar to last year, the first season open to guests following a seven-year construction period fraught with delays.

Boat activity in front of the beach suggests a small number of North Koreans have continued to visit the resort outside the peak season, likely wealthy citizens on private trips using their own vehicles.

There appeared to be around 150 buses and 50 cars total in the two main parking lots each day, with more scattered throughout the zone. 

State media has claimed that the maximum capacity of the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area is 20,000 people per day, but in another instance said it was 40,000.

Most of the zone’s 37 hostels (려관) and 17 hotels (호텔) were unfinished in time for the 2025 season. It’s unclear if they opened this year, but there was no significant rise in vehicle traffic to strongly suggest they did.

The hostels appear to be for ordinary North Koreans and group tours organized by workplaces and schools, while the fancier hotels appear to target wealthy clientele and foreigners, according to NK Pro analysis of state television coverage of the resort.

State propaganda frequently promotes the resort as a “gift” from leader Kim Jong Un to be enjoyed by all citizens, and a symbol of the country’s “socialist civilization.” Korean Central Television advertises the resort almost every day through sleek video segments promoting its amenities and showing guests enjoying their vacations. 

If hosting people on multi-day stays for a maximum of about two months each summer, official claims about the resort’s capacity suggest there could be up to a million visitors per summer. 

This means it would take decades for all North Koreans to enjoy a stay at the resort during summer, and longer if people make repeated visits, as state media often quotes visitors vowing to return annually. 

North Korean propaganda usually presents Wonsan Kalma as a common resource for all citizens, but has also given a more realistic portrayal of organized trips that reward a select number of upstanding workers and students. 

The primary state newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported last month that factories and mines have organized vacations to the resort for “tens of thousands of labor innovators” and their families this year, describing the trips as rewards for having “overfulfilled” production quotas.

Workers reportedly told the paper the vacations will give them “fresh determination” and that they would “repay the Party’s benevolence” with increased production. 

“Spending enjoyable days of rest in the Party’s benevolence, [the labor innovators] pledge again and again to do still more work for the motherland,” the report added.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) has refrained from reporting statistics about visitors while using general terms like “many visitors.” 

It said last month people were arriving from other parts of the country by train and bus, without mentioning flight travel, despite the modern airport attached to the resort. 

A new train station that Kim Jong Un visited in June and which officially opened at the end of the summer season has yet to appear busy in satellite imagery and likely has yet to help boost visitor numbers given the timing of its opening.

Edited by David Choi