North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has condemned a flagship tourist development with the South as an eyesore and ordered its demolition, state media reported Wednesday, in a stark illustration of dire relations between Pyongyang and Seoul.
The Mount Kumgang tourist complex was built by Southern company Hyundai Asan in the North on one of the peninsula’s most scenic mountains, drawing hundreds of thousands of Southern visitors.
But tours came to an abrupt end in 2008 after a North Korean soldier shot dead a Southern tourist who strayed off the approved path and Seoul suspended travel.
Pyongyang had long wanted to resume the lucrative visits, but the tours would now violate international sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic programmes.
Kim visited the site and lambasted the “shabby” buildings as “just a hotchpotch with no national character at all”, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported, adding “they were built like makeshift tents in a disaster-stricken area or isolation wards” and “very backward in terms of architecture”.
“He instructed to remove all the unpleasant-looking facilities of the south side,” KCNA said, “and to build new modern service facilities our own way”.
The announcement is a striking repudiation of what was once one of the two biggest inter-Korean projects, along with the now-shuttered Kaesong Industrial Complex, where Southern companies employed North Korean workers while paying Pyongyang for their services.
It came only a day after the South’s President Moon Jae-in — who has long championed engagement with the North — touted the benefits of a possible “peace economy” in a speech to Seoul’s parliament.
But contact between the neighbours stalled after the collapse of a February summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Hanoi, and Pyongyang has since repeatedly excoriated Seoul, saying it has “nothing to talk any more” with it.
While Kim said the demolition should proceed “with an agreement with the relevant unit of the south side”, he added the view that Mount Kumgang was “a common property of the north and the south” was “a mistaken idea and a misguided understanding”.
“Mt Kumgang is our land won at the cost of blood and even a cliff and a tree on it are associated with our sovereignty and dignity,” it cited him as saying.
“We will always welcome our compatriots from the south if they want to come to Mt Kumgang,” he said, but it was “not desirable to let the south side undertake the tour of Mt Kumgang, our famous mountain”.
Hyundai Asan spent 220 billion won (now $190 million) on building the site, with another 559 billion won paid in fees to the North’s authorities, the company says.
A company representative told AFP they were “taken aback with the news as we have been preparing for the resumption of tours”, but added they would “deal with it calmly”.
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