I can’t help but be fascinated by unusual tourism projects. Along those lines, North Korea is officially opening a previously abandoned seaside resort town. The big question is who will actually visit, given the country’s lack of international visitors, and lack of a domestic tourism market…

North Korea’s Wonsan-Kalma resort town officially opens

North Korea is opening its Wonsan-Kalma beach resort development as of July 1, 2025. For background, this development covers 605 acres, and is along a 3.5-mile beach. The development features all kinds of leisure facilities, including thousands of hotel rooms.

The development is roughly 100 miles from Pyongyang, and can be reached by road in about two hours. On top of that, there’s even an airport in the region with a 10,000+ foot runway. It’s a dual use civil and military airport, but up until now, hasn’t regularly been used for commercial service (the military was here because it was a missile testing site).

This seaside project has been a long time coming, and was abandoned for years. Specifically, construction began on this back in 2018, with plans to open in 2019. Yes, that’s of course a very fast pace, but when it’s the North Korean military behind the development, it’s easier to stick to a schedule, in theory. I imagine they build as if their life depends on it, because, well… 😉

However, that deadline ended up being missed, and then the development was abandoned at the start of the pandemic. Construction once again picked up in 2023, with Kim Jong Un being quite invested in this opening.

Now, six years after the initial planned opening, the seaside resort is finally welcoming its first visitors, with a reported capacity for 20,000 visitors at a time. Kim recently attended the grand opening, just days ahead of the official opening. Kim emphasized the need for high service standards, plus additional attractions, like an amusement park, shopping malls, and other leisure areas. He wants this to be “world class,” which seems… optimistic.

Kim grew up in Wonsan, and it’s also where many of the country’s elite have private villas. So they’ve been trying to transform the town, I guess to make it more broadly appealing.

Who will visit this North Korean resort town, though?

North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world… perhaps the most isolated country. Before the pandemic, the country allowed a very limited amount of tourism, where you had to travel as part of a group, and needed to have a guide with you at all times, so that you’d only see the North Korea that the government wanted you to see.

Then tourism shut down at the start of the pandemic, though it has very slowly picked up again in the past couple of years, initially with visitors from countries like Russia and China. North Korea then opened to more Western tourists as of February 2025, before abruptly shutting down weeks later.

The obvious question now is exactly who this resort town is intended for, especially with thousands of hotel rooms. The average North Korean of course doesn’t have much disposable income, let alone freedom. So I suppose this could be intended in part for the North Korean elite who are connected to Kim… but it sounds like many of them already have homes and villas there? Initially, the area will only be open to domestic tourists.

What about foreign tourists? In the long run, Kim’s plan is reportedly to target tourists from “friendly” nations, like Russia and China. Russian tourists were even given an exclusive preview of the resort town last year.

It remains to be seen if these visitors would need to have a guide with them all the time, or if they’d be allowed to roam around freely. Regardless, presumably they wouldn’t be allowed to leave the tourist zone without being escorted.

Obviously this would set an interesting precedent for North Korea. Up until now, North Korea’s tourism has mostly been foreigners taking carefully curated tours out of fascination. Can North Korea actually just attract leisure tourists who are looking to relax?

It’s interesting to note how in the past, some of North Korea’s most ambitious projects have been outright abandoned, despite being nearly complete. For example, there’s the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, which is by far the tallest building in the city, and was supposed to have thousands of hotel rooms, and symbolize the future of North Korea.

However, it never ended up being completed, and is now just an eyesore. Given that North Korea is all about appearances, you’d think that this would have been completed out of pride, if nothing else, even if only a few rooms were operational.

It sounds like the Wonsan-Kalma development won’t suffer the same fate. Or at least it’ll open for now, and we’ll see what happens in the long run…

Bottom line

North Korea is opening its Wonsan-Kalma seaside development in the coming days, after a delay of roughly six years. This will initially be open to domestic tourists, but the long term plan is to also open it up to international tourists.

I’m curious to see how this development evolves over the years. It’s actually opening, but will it stay open, and will it have any visitors? Is the project actually as complete as the government claims, with 20,000 hotel rooms? After all, a lot of things about North Korea are hard to verify. Lastly, is this actually a destination that visitors from Russia and China will eventually visit to relax, rather than just being a place people visit out of fascination?

How do you see this North Korean seaside resort town playing out?