Snow business: Empty slopes at North Korea ski resort

Outside a large stone tablet acclaims “the work of Dear Leader Kim Jong-un who devoted hard work and heart and soul to make our people the happiest and most civilised people”.

On the ski fields of Mount Taehwa, groomed pistes snake down wooded hillsides to a luxurious hotel and a giant screen showing a North Korean army choir. But the runs are empty.

Work began on Masikryong ski resort, the only one in the North and the brainchild of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, after Pyeongchang in the neighbouring South was awarded the 2018 winter Olympics.

The impoverished, nuclear-armed nation has ramshackle infrastructure and around 40 per cent of its people are undernourished, according to the Global Hunger Index.

But the luxurious resort boasts a wood-panelled reception and statues of winter sports athletes.

Deserted

At a visitor centre packed with pictures of Kim — guides credit him with giving on-the-spot guidance no fewer than 144 times over the course of construction. The resort is a three-hour drive from Pyongyang.

The warm comforts inside are a world away from the scenes outside the entrance checkpoint, where peasant farmers drag sleds loaded with firewood across frozen lakes. And — aside from the nursery slopes — it is deserted.

At one point on a weekend afternoon in peak season, Swede Patrik Hultberg was the only skier on the slopes, he said. “That’s really cool. I wish I could experience it more, hitting new pistes and there’s nobody there.”

Resort executives say it sees 70,000 visitors a year. Such figures are hard to square with the uncrowded vistas, but hotel director An Song-ryol insists it is profitable.