Kim orders demolition of SoKor’s buildings at noKor resort
SEOUL (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered the destruction of South Korean-made hotels and other tourist facilities at North Korea’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 (KCNA) yesterday said Kim had visited the resort and described its facilities as “shabby” and lacking national character.
Kim instructed officials to entirely remove the “unpleasant-looking facilities” built by South Korea after discussing the matter with the latter’s officials and construct “new modern service facilities our own way that go well with the natural scenery of Mt. Kumgang,” 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 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.”
The report said Kim criticized North Korea’s policies pushed under his late father as too dependent on the South and vowed that the North would redevelop the site on its own.
Lee Sang-min, spokesman of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, said South Korea will “actively defend the property rights of our people” and plans to accept any proposed talks with North Korea over the facilities.
Lee did not offer a specific answer when asked whether South Korea could do anything to stop the North if it begins to tear down the facilities unilaterally.
Experts are mixed on whether North Korea is really intending to independently develop tourism at Diamond Mountain or trying to dial up pressure on South Korea to restart the tours and upgrade the aging facilities.
Tours to Diamond Mountain were a major symbol of cooperation between the Koreas before the South suspended them in 2008 after a North Korean guard fatally shot a South Korean tourist there.
Kim’s comments came during a prolonged freeze in relations with Seoul and are a major setback to liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who met Kim three times last year while expressing ambitions to reboot inter-Korean economic engagement.