Kim Jong Un delays 'North Korea's Benidorm resort' again after visiting vanity project
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Kim Jong Un’s planned Benidorm style resort in North Korea is now facing further delays. The dictator is hoping to lure in Brits and other tourists from around the world to his seaside location with the aim of it being similar to Spain’s ‘costa’ resorts but the opening keeps being pushed back.
The vanity project in the so-called Galma Coastal Tourist Zone, in Wonsan, is on the east coast of North Korea and at a former missile launch site. Kim headed down himself last weekend to check out how work was progressing with the resort first expected to have opened in 2020.
He was seen strolling along the beach arm-in-arm with his daughter Ju-ae - who was making her first public appearance since October when she attended an intercontinental ballistic missile test. But now the new North Korean hotspot is not expected to open its doors until June, 2025. Plans were first drawn up to build the resort in 2017 after North Korean officials went on a trip to Benidorm on the Costa Blanca and were said to be “amazed” at what they saw. The development, though, has been hit by numerous set-backs not least by the Covid pandemic but also international sanctions, material shortages and issues arising over the design.
According to state media Kim has now said: "When guiding the construction at the location I said that Myongsasimni (the beach resort) would be a 4km-long stretch of beach crowded with people full of happy laughter. Now that ambition has come true. The construction of the Kalma coastal tourist area is the first big step of great significance in putting the national tourist industry on a track for development of a new era.".
