IT’S the showpiece beach resort at the heart of Kim Jong-un’s plans for a holiday empire – but the “North Korean Benidorm” hides a dark secret.
The Wonsan-Kalma resort reportedly got its nickname after dictator Kim sent a fact-finding mission to Spain’s Costa Blanca in 2017.
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But unlike its Mediterranean rival, Wonsan-Kalma has a history filled with forced labour, human rights abuses – and poo.
The horrors began right at the start of the project, when the regime press-ganged teenage schoolkids into “shock brigades” of builders.
Pyongyang propaganda bragged that these youths were building the resort’s hotels at the rate of a storey per day in a December 2019 report.
But by then two deadlines to finish the job had already passed, and with a third looming, builders were made to work almost round the clock in icy temperatures.
Party chiefs mobilised workers “in the bitter cold of January, February, and March, allowing them to sleep for only three hours a day,” a source told the Daily NK newspaper.
And though the regime called the youths “volunteers”, really they had no real choice.
People are forced into “shock brigades” with the threat of arrest and detention in labour camps, according to a UN report about forced labour in North Korea.
Recruits get a monthly wage that is “only enough to buy two packs of cigarettes”, the report added, and are fed so little that malnutrition is widespread.
Workers at Wonsan lived off “foul-smelling seaweed soup, salted radishes and yellow corn rice,” according to Daily NK.
Female workers faced an added peril.
One woman quoted by the UN recalled how shock brigade chiefs “harassed” them and said “many women were sexually abused”.
North Korea expert Michael Madden described the backbreaking toil faced by “volunteers” at Wonsan.
He said: “Youth Shock Brigades would be involved in digging foundations, framing, painting, paving, and moving materials and supplies.
“Pay for brigade members is minimal.
“In the past, the brigade members were not provided adequate food supplies and stole from local populations.”
Today the resort welcomes Russian visitors and members of the North Korean elite.
But guests may be surprised to learn that they’re not the first to stay in the brand-new hotels.
When the third deadline for finishing the resort passed in April 2020, the site lay almost abandoned for months as Covid-19 spread around the world.
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Soon reports emerged that homeless wanderers – known as kkotjebi in North Korea – had moved in to the skeletal hotels.
“The buildings are no different from toilets, with bowel movements left behind by the kkotjebi everywhere,” a source told Daily NK.
“Now they’re full of human waste and soot from fires.”
The same report also revealed that the resort’s planning chief and site manager had been sacked in 2019 amid mounting delays.
It’s a punishment with potentially fatal consequences.
Mr Madden, the founder of North Korea Leadership Watch, and a fellow of the Stimson Center in Washington DC, said nothing had been heard of either of them since.
If they were blamed for inefficiencies or incompetence, he said, they probably faced demotion, intensive indoctrination, and a manual labour assignment.
“On the other hand if there was malfeasance or some type of corruption, then both of these people have, at the least, faced a lengthy incarceration,” he continued.
“If these individuals had a habit of corrupt activities on Wonsan-Kalma and any previous projects, then one or both project managers faced the firing squad.”
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Before it was a holiday destination, Wonsan was a missile launch site.
Indeed the rockets continued blasting off even as the hotels took shape.
And ultimately, that’s how money spent by tourists will be used.
Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, warned holidaymakers not to fund Kim’s “tools of death”.
He said: “The money coming from tourists, mostly Russians at the moment, will go to the areas that the regime regards as critical to its survival.
“These are: keeping the Kim family rich, and the key elites happy, as well as developing nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and other tools of death.”
The North Korean tourism push, which seeks to raise foreign currency, has also seen the regime open the Masikryong Ski Resort, and Yangdok hot springs resort.
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