Kim orders destruction of mountain resort hotels
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the destruction of South Korean-made hotels and other tourist facilities at the North’s Diamond Mountain resort, apparently because Seoul won’t defy international sanctions and resume South Korean tours at the site.
Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said that Kim had visited the resort and described its facilities as ‘‘shabby’’ and lacking national character. The report said Kim criticised North Korea’s policies pushed under his late father as too dependent on the South.
Seoul suspended tours to Diamond Mountain in 2008 following a shooting death of a tourist. It cannot restart inter-Korean economic activities without defying sanctions against Pyongyang, which have been strengthened since 2016 when the North began speeding up its nuclear development.
Kim instructed officials to entirely remove the ‘‘unpleasantlooking facilities’’ built by the South after discussing the matter with South Korean officials and construct ‘‘new modern service facilities our own way that go well with the natural scenery of Mt Kumkang,’’ the KCNA said.
‘‘(Kim) said that the buildings are just a hotchpotch with no national character at all, and that they were built like makeshift tents in a disaster-stricken area or isolation wards,’’ the agency said.
‘‘He said that due to the mistaken policy of the predecessors who tried to get benefits without any efforts after just offering the tourist area, the mountain was left uncared for more than 10 years. He made a sharp criticism of the very wrong, dependent policy of the predecessors who were going to rely on others when the country was not strong enough.’’
In a summit last September in Pyongyang, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in vowed to restart South Korean tours to Diamond Mountain and normalise operations at an interKorean factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, voicing optimism that US-led sanctions could end and allow such projects.
However, the projects remain shelved amid deadlocked nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang. –