Wooing tourists to visit a ‘socialist fairyland’
Despite human-rights record, isolated country hopes to have two million visitors by 2020
PYONGYANG— If you’re still looking for somewhere exotic to go this summer and don’t mind a vacation that comes with a heavy dose of socialist propaganda and leader worship, North Korea says it’s just the place for you.
Fresh off a drastic, half-year ban that closed North Korea’s doors to virtually all foreigners over fears they would spread the Ebola virus — although no cases of Ebola were reported anywhere in Asia — the country is once again determined to show off its “socialist fairyland” to tourists.
The focus on tourism is the blessing of Kim Jong Un himself and, in typical fashion, officials have set lofty goals in their effort to please their leader. About 100,000 tourists came to North Korea last year, all but a few thousand of them from neighbouring China.
Kim Sang Hak, a senior economist at the influential Academy of Social Sciences, told The Associated Press the North hopes that by around 2017, there will be 10 times as many tourists and that the number will hit two million by 2020.
Pyongyang’s interest in attracting tourists may sound ironic, or even contradictory, for a country that has taken extreme measures to remain sheltered from the outside world.
But Kim said the push, formally endorsed by Kim Jong Un in March 2013, is seen as both a potentially lucrative revenue stream and a means of countering stereotypes of the country as starving, backward and relentlessly bleak.
“Tourism can produce a lot of profit relative to the investment required, so that’s why our country is putting priority on it,” he said in a recent interview in Pyongyang, adding that along with scenic mountains, secluded beaches and a seemingly endless array of monuments and museums, the North has another ace up its sleeve — the image that it is simply unlike anywhere else on Earth.
“Many people in foreign countries think in a wrong way about our country,” Kim said, brushing aside criticisms of its human-rights record, lack of freedoms and problems with hunger in the countryside.
Opponents in the West say tourists who go to North Korea are helping to fill the coffers of a rogue regime and harming efforts to isolate and pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons and improve its human-rights record. For safety reasons, the U.S. State Department strongly advises U.S. citizens not to travel to North Korea.
None of that has stopped the number of American and European tourists from gradually increasing, and such concerns are not so strong in the countries North Korea is most actively wooing — China, Russia and Southeast Asia.
“About 80 per cent of the tourists who come are from neighbouring countries,” said state tourism official Kim Yong Il. “It’s normal to develop tourism within your region, so our country is not exceptional in that way. But we are also expanding to European countries as well.”
In Pyongyang, some of the more popular tourist sites include a new, high-tech shooting range, where visitors can hunt animated tigers with laser guns or use live ammo to bag real pheasants, which can be prepared to eat right there on the spot. There is also a new equestrian centre, a huge water park and revamped “fun fairs” replete with roller-coasters, fast-food stands and a 5-D theatre. After a year of feverish construction, Pyongyang’s new international airport terminal could open as soon as next month.
Tourists of any nationality can expect constant monitoring from everwatchful guides and a lot of visits to model hospitals, schools and farms, along with well-staged events intended to impress and promote Pyongyang’s unique brand of authoritarian socialism.