Sawt Falasteen - North Korea's Kim tours hot tubs, BBQ joints at lavish new mountain resort

The new facility in Samjiyon in the country's mountainous north is an "attractive mountainous tourist resort and leisure ground for the people", Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

Kim toured "bedrooms of hotels, cosy leisure spaces and commercial and public catering facilities", KCNA said.

Images in state media showed Kim accompanied by his daughter, who analysts say is called Ju-ae and is his likely heir, touring the hotels.

Among the facilities on show were both indoor and outdoor baths, as well as barbecue restaurants.

Kim even tested the firmness of the beds.

State media said he hailed the resort as "clear proof of the ever-growing ideal of our people and our state's potential for development".

And he declared the area to be an "innovative and highly civilized city representing the tourism culture of the country".

State media said the new facilities showed the North Korean people were the "most dignified" and have "nothing to envy in the world".

Not reported was what the fees would be for the average North Korean, who analysts say typically earns up to $3 a month in state-run factories.

- Boosting tourism -

Analysts agreed the new facilities were likely aimed at tourists from abroad.

"The main target demographic is foreigners," Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, told AFP.

But, he added, visits could also serve as rewards for "productive units" of workers.

Lim Eul-Chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, said "large-scale group tourism could soon be accommodated via border regions with China".

"The five newly completed hotels could serve as core accommodation facilities," he said.

The North last year permitted Russian tourists to return for the first time since the pandemic and Western tour operators briefly returned in February this year. No Chinese tourists are known to have returned to the country.

Samjiyon carries potent symbolism in North Korean propaganda as it is a stone's throw away from Mount Paektu, the peninsula's highest mountain where official accounts say Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, was born.

Historians largely agree he was actually born in the Soviet Union.

Alongside the resort opening, Kim has in recent weeks toured a number of newly completed factories.

His ruling Korean Workers Party is expected hold its first congress in half a decade in early 2026, where policymakers will hash out economic plans for the next five years.

H.Darwish--SF-PST