FOR ASIANS USED TO NORTH KOREAN THREATS, GUAM IS STILL A GETAWAY
The tiny territory continues to attract visitors despite Pyongyang’s latest taunts
After North Korea threatened to lob missiles toward Guam, the people of this American territory in the Western Pacific stayed calm. One thing that certainly helped the mood: Its tourists aren’t the kind to shy away. Tourism is big business in Guam, an island of 162,000 residents that welcomed 1.5 million visitors last year. Japanese are the single biggest group, and South Koreans aren’t far behind — and to them, bluster from North Korea may seem like old news.
President Donald Trump told Gov Eddie Calvo of Guam that the threat had made the island “extremely famous all over the world” and that tourism was “going to go up, like, tenfold.” While there’s no evidence yet of any sort of ballistic missile boon, there’s no sign Mr Kim Jong-un’s saber-rattling had any significant dampening effect on visits, either.
Flights to Guam from South Korea and Japan take about half the time it would take to get to Hawaii, another popular destination for tourists from East Asia.
Visitors have continued to pack the hotels, beaches and shopping malls of Guam in recent days, showing little concern about recent threats.
Lee Hyun-soo from Seoul, South Korea’s capital, was visiting while on leave from his compulsory military service. The island felt calm despite recent events, he said as he stood outside the UnderWater World aquarium.
“It’s so much safer than South Korea, maybe five times safer,” said Mr Lee, 21.
At the Eggs ‘n Things restaurant, the line for a table wraps around the building most mornings. At Tumon Beach, home to the island’s main tourist hotels, crowds flow onto the sand to take pictures of the sun setting over the Pacific. And at a mall filled with luxury stores, shoppers stop to take photos as dancers in grass skirts perform in front of a Burberry outlet.
“Everyone here is very relaxed,” said Vivian Chan, 28, from Taipei, Taiwan, as she finished a bowl of cold udon noodles from a Japanese food stand.
She had feared that North Korea might launch missiles on Aug 15, a national holiday. “North Korea’s Liberation Day passed without a problem, so we aren’t worried,” she said.
The Dusit Thani Guam Resort had “a handful” of cancellations, but the impact was minimal, said Marissa Borja, public relations and marketing manager for the Thai-owned hotel.
“We still see a strong surge of Korean guests,” she said. “Their overall sentiment was, like everyone else, they were saying, ‘Yeah, we’re kind of used to this sort of thing.’ To have them tell us that is quite reassuring.”
Last year a record 144,758 people came to Guam in August, the peak month for travel here, said Josh Tyquiengco, a spokesman for the Guam Visitors Bureau. As of Aug 15, visitors are up three percent over last year, he said.
“While the short-term effect of the North Korea threat appears to not have affected our industry, we need to continue to monitor what that means in the long term,” he said.
The United States took over Guam from Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The US Navy governed the island until the Japanese captured it during World War II and held it for two and a half years. Hundreds of Chamorro, the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, were killed during the Japanese occupation.
In December, President Barack Obama signed legislation to pay reparations to victims of the Japanese, a move long sought by residents. The United States decided not to pursue reparations from Japan after the war, so the costs will be borne by American taxpayers.
Guam residents are US citizens by birth but cannot vote in presidential elections, and the island’s delegate to Congress cannot vote.
In many ways, life here looks much like rural and suburban America, with fast food outlets, pickup trucks and pee wee football games.
In Tamuning, tourist hotels line the placid Tumon Bay. Visitors paddle in the warm, shallow water and lie on the sand near concrete pillbox fortifications erected by the Japanese. Outside a mall with Givenchy, Gucci and Louis Vuitton outlets, well-fed island dogs sleep on the sidewalk.
Reminders of Asia are everywhere, too. Many workers in restaurants and retail shops can handle conversations in several Asian languages. Store countertops display Korean, Japanese and Chinese language guides to US coins and bills. Strip malls have businesses like Convenience Store Osaka, Gangnam Korean Restaurant and many gun ranges for visitors from countries where firearms are tightly restricted.
“The Asian tourists like it here because they can get a little bit of America,” said Josh Melliza, manager of the Kicks/HI Guam shoe and clothing shop. “They can get huge hamburgers, not little tiny ones.”
Mr Melliza said he’d seen no noticeable decline in business recently.
“The South Koreans all say they feel safe here,” he said. “And for us, it’s nothing new. We’re used to it. And we do feel safe with the military presence. It’s 2017, there should be technology to shoot down a missile.”
As the westernmost US territory, Guam is a key to the US military presence in the Pacific. Armed forces here could be called on in conflicts over the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, the South China Sea or other regional hot spots. The island is home to a naval station, an air base and about 7,000 military personnel.
Four Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarines are based here, and B-1 bombers make regular runs to the Korean Peninsula from Guam. North Korea singled out the bomber flights when it said it was drawing up plans to fire four Hwasong-12 ballistic missiles near the island. Last week the North Korean state media said Mr Kim was holding off on launching the missiles, stating “he would watch a little more the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees.”
A short video clip uploaded last week on a North Korean propaganda website, Uriminzokkiri, contained a computerised image of North Korean missiles flying toward Guam. “If only one of our missiles breaches the air defence system of Guam and falls in waters around it, the fake image of the United States as a sole superpower will be laid bare to the whole world,” the subtitle said.
Increases in military spending for Guam, including plans to shift Marines here from Okinawa, have lifted growth, and it is still the most important sector of the island’s economy. Last week, the Department of Defence awarded a $164 million contract for utilities and site improvements for the future Marine base.
With tourism as the other pillar of the economy, the balancing act can be awkward.
“Military spending and tourism is the basis for our economy and the forces that drive those are not always compatible,” said Robert Underwood, the president of the University of Guam and former delegate for the island to the US House of Representatives.
“The island, half of it is rooting for instability so you get more military spending, the other half is rooting for more stability so you get more tourism,” he added. “It’s a duality, our existence.”