Benidorm -style resort in North Korea welcomes the first Russian tourists

A new beach resort in North Korea, criticized by human rights groups for the harsh treatment of construction workers, welcomes its first group of Russian tourists this week.

Wonsan Kalma resort was Found at a grand ceremony last month By North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, who welcomes him as a “world -class tourist and cultural destination”.

The details of how this resort was built are enveloped in a secret in a country, largely closed to the outside world.

BBC Verify has studied satellite images, received internal planning documents and spoke with experts and former North Korean insider about their concerns about human rights violations during the development of the site.

Kim Jong Un spent much of his youth in Vonsan, and before the construction of the new resort, the city was a popular holiday destination for the elite of the country.

“When the Vonsan tourist area was originally planned … The idea was to attract about one million tourists in the area, while keeping it in a closed area,” says Ri Yong Ho, a senior economic officer in North Korea, participating in the early stages of the resort planning and defective in 2014.

“The intention was to open a little North Korea.”

In 2017, a year before the start of construction, Kim sent a delegation to a mission to establish facts in Spain, where the team toured the Benidorm resort.

The North Korean delegation “included high -ranking politicians and many architects who took many notes,” recalls Matthias Perez as a member of the Spanish team that hosted a tour delegation, including a themed park, high -height and port hotels.

The North Korean brochure with a map of the resort has 43 hotels identified along the beach front, as well as guest houses of artificial lake and sites to the campsite.

We corresponded to these places with high resolution satellite images, although we cannot check that they are actually completed.

A water park, supplemented with towering yellow water slides, is placed back from the beach.

On the north, there is an entertainment neighborhood that includes buildings that have been identified in the plan such as theater, recreation and fitness centers and cinema.

Since the beginning of 2018, satellite images made in 18 months have revealed dozens of buildings that emerge along 4 km (2.5 miles) from the coastline.

By the end of 2018, about 80% of the resort was completed, according to studies conducted by the satellite image company, Si Analytics, based in South Korea.

However, after this effort to build whirlwinds, then it seems that the work of the site has stopped.

This quick pace of construction has sparked concerns about the treatment of the employees of the site.

The UN emphasized a system of forced labor used in North Korea, more special “shock brigades”, where workers are often facing difficult conditions, long hours and inadequate compensation.

James Hein of the UN Human Rights Service in Seoul says that “there are reports that the resort was built with the help of what they call shock brigades.”

“We also saw messages that people worked 24 hours at the end to finish this thing that sounds like a shock brigade.”

The BBC talk to a North Korean who serves and ultimately manages shock brigades.

Although Chu Chung Hu – who subsequently defective – did not participate in the construction of the Vonson resort, he recalled the brutal conditions of the brigades he was watching.

“The principle behind these (brigades) was that no matter what, you had to accomplish the task, even if it cost you your life,” he said.

“I saw many women who were under such physical tension and were eating so bad that their periods stopped completely.”

Kang Guri, who worked in Vonsan before escaping in South Korea in 2023, says her cousin voluntarily worked on the construction site because he saw this as a way to the country’s residence in Pyongyang, which is reserved for citizens reliable by the regime.

“He could hardly sleep. They (no) give him enough to eat,” she said.

“The facilities are not properly organized, some people just die at work and they (the authorities) do not take responsibility if they fall and die.”

K -Ja Kang also said that residents of Wonsan were expelled from their homes while the resort project expanded, often without compensation.

Although not specific to the experience of G -ja Kang, the BBC Cerify was able to identify by satellite analysis the destruction of buildings near the main road leading to the resort. In their place you can already see the larger blocks of the tower.

“They just destroy everything and build something new, especially if it is in a good place,” said G -Jz Kang.

“The problem is, however unfair it may feel, people cannot openly speak or protest.”

The BBC addressed the North Korean officials for comment.

North Korea has been almost completely closed to foreign visitors, with only a few highly controlled tours has been allowed to visit the country in recent years.

Wonsan Kalma is seen not only as a play of an important role in the revival of sick economic wealth of the sanctioned country, but also as a means of strengthening military support About the Moscow War in Ukraine.

According to the early planning documents, which are seen by the BBC, the original goal was to attract more than a million visitors, with foreign tourists expected to come mainly from China and Russia.

We have scanned travel agencies sites in both China and Russia for any advertisements promoting trips to the new resort.

None of the Chinese agencies we checked were advertising trips to Vonson. In Russia, however, we have identified three agencies offering tours involving Wonsan Kalma.

We called one of the Russian agencies in early July, posing as an interested client a week before his first planned departure on July 7, and we were told that he had attracted 12 people from Russia.

The weekly trip to North Korea, including three days at the Wonsan resort, cost $ 1800 (1300 pounds) – this is 60% more than the average monthly salary in Russia.

According to this tour operator, two more trips are scheduled.

We have contacted the other two agencies offering such tourist packages, but they refused to discover how many people have registered.

Andrei Lankov, an expert on the relations between Russo-North and North at Kookmin University in Seoul, said Wonsan Kalma is “very unlikely to become seriously popular with Russian visitors.”

“Russian tourists can easily go to places like Turkey, Egypt, Thailand and Vietnam, which are much better than anything that North Korea can develop,” he said.

“The service standards are higher and you are not constantly supervised.”

Additional reporting from Yaroslava Kiryukhina, Yi MA and Cristina cuevas. Graphics by Sally Nicolls and Ervan Rivo.