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3 months ago
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- By: Ruediger Frank
- August 1, 2025
- Economy
(Source: Korean Central News Agency)Domestic Reorientation, Background, and Implications
The recent opening of the Wonsan-Kalma Beach Resort in the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or North Korea) has prompted questions about the state’s underlying intentions and the resort’s feasibility and future prospects. In particular, observers have expressed doubts that the estimated 20,000 vacation slots can be filled by foreign visitors. Until a few years ago, such a perspective would have been highly justified. As Ouelette shows, “tourism” in the context of North Korea indeed usually meant inbound international tourism.[1]
This seems no longer to be the case. A proper understanding of the function and future of the Wonsan-Kalma resort requires a fundamental change of perspective. The gigantic resort is, in all likelihood, primarily intended for domestic travelers. As the example of state-organized tourism in other socialist countries shows, this opens a whole array of new questions and challenges, some of which will be discussed here.
This shift in focus from foreign to domestic tourism is likely driven by two main factors. First, the project mirrors many leisure and domestic tourism policies observed in other authoritarian and state-socialist systems. Second, it reflects the emergence of a growing segment of the population with disposable income—signaling the rise of a middle class and a broader shift toward domestic consumption as a foundation of the national economy.
The implications are far-reaching. The emergence of large-scale domestic tourism would suggest a strategic recalibration of the regime’s economic policy and legitimacy-building efforts. The resort also represents a form of Keynesian economic stimulus. More broadly, it points to a quiet transformation of North Korea’s economy: economic policy long prioritized the provision of basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter, but this appears to mark a shift in focus toward consumption-led development.
Not least, the domestic orientation of the Wonsan-Kalma project can also be viewed in the context of changes in North Korea’s foreign policy, particularly its de-risking strategy following the failed 2019 Hanoi Summit and the radical redefinition of inter-Korean relations since the end of 2023, including the abandonment of over five decades of unification policies. In short, the North Korean state seems to be confident to be able to afford even stronger self-isolation from the West in general, and from South Korea in particular. The renewed intensity of external relations with China and Russia, and now the emergence of the domestic consumer as an economic factor all contribute to this calculation. This means North Korea is in lesser need of Western economic cooperation and its leadership seems more than ever focused on economic development. Such shifts should inform future international engagement with North Korea.
Striking Parallels
North Korea is not the first authoritarian or socialist state to use vacation and leisure systems to advance the interests of the regime. In fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, state-affiliated agencies—the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (“After Work”) and Kraft durch Freude (KdF, “Strength through Joy”)—organized and coordinated a wide range of leisure activities. In early Nazi Germany, KdF became a mass phenomenon of tourist travel for middle- and working-class Germans (Baranowski 2004).[2]
In the Soviet Union, tourism agencies were reorganized along similar lines during the late 1920s and 1930s and became formally subordinated to the state economic apparatus. As Gorsuch and Koenker argue: “whether under socialism, capitalism, or some form of corporatism, authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century found it useful to organize the opportunity for their citizens to experience leisure travel.”[3]
Thus, by 2025, North Korea has ceased to be an outlier in this regard.
In socialist systems, vacations were framed as both a right and a duty, constituting what Koenker calls “reproductive rest”—officially sanctioned time away from work to restore productivity, health, and loyalty to the state.[4] Paid holidays, state-run resorts, and organized group outings served multiple functions: rewarding loyal workers, offering incentives for productivity, and cementing bonds between citizens and the regime.
Due to the similarity of one of its flagship projects with the North Korean Wonsan-Kalma resort, and due to its role as the precursor of the East German system of state-organized vacations, the next section will discuss a few details of the KdF program in Nazi Germany.
KdF Program (Kraft durch Freude) – Nazi Germany
The KdF (Kraft durch Freude, “Strength Through Joy”) was a mass leisure organization established by the Nazi regime just months after it came to power in 1933. It was part of the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront), which had replaced the banned trade unions. The main objectives of the KdF were to integrate workers into the Nazi system and to foster loyalty to the regime.
Before most of its activities were suspended with the outbreak of World War II, the KdF organized subsidized holidays, cruises, theater visits, sports events, and cultural excursions. By 1938, it had become the world’s largest tourism operator, with more than 10 million Germans—about one fifth of the population—participating in its programs.[5]
The KdF functioned both as a social welfare initiative and a means of political indoctrination, aiming to boost productivity and reinforce ideological alignment with the Nazi state.
Comparisons and analogies are often fraught with difficulty. Yet in this case, it is hard to avoid drawing parallels between what was intended to become the largest KdF seaside resort in Prora, on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen, and North Korea’s Wonsan-Kalma Beach Resort. Both are coastal developments designed to accommodate approximately 20,000 visitors, and both served similar purposes: social control, political loyalty, and regime legitimation.
Planned design of the Prora resort. (Source: https://inselzeitung.de/prora-ruegen/).The Prora resort was the second-largest civilian construction project in the Third Reich after the autobahn and even received a Grand Prix at the 1937 World Expo in Paris.[6] Unlike Wonsan-Kalma, however, it never opened due to the outbreak of the war. In the postwar period, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) repurposed the over 4.5 km-long complex for military use.
The ideological and institutional legacy of the KdF, however, proved more enduring. The GDR transformed the concept into its own version of domestic tourism, supplementing it with elements of the Soviet model—which may itself have been at least partially influenced by the Nazi example.
The following section discusses key characteristics of the East German case with the aim of generating hypotheses for the potential future development of North Korea’s domestic tourism project.
Domestic Vacations in East Germany
In the GDR, the allocation of vacation opportunities was shared among three institutions: the state travel agency Reisebüro der DDR, the youth travel agency Jugendtourist, and the Free German Trade Union Federation (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund or FDGB). The latter reflects a return to pre-KdF structures of organizing mass travel. This arrangement was no coincidence: following a 1922 speech by Lenin, trade unions were regarded as the “transmission belt” connecting the Party to the masses.[7]
The FDGB controlled the majority of domestic vacation opportunities, distributing “vacation checks” that granted access to holiday resorts, sanatoria, and contracted private accommodations. Prices were subsidized and varied according to income, type of accommodation, and season. By the 1980s, approximately 10 million East Germans made use of FDGB and other facilities each year.[8]
This number illustrates the potential scale of domestic tourism in North Korea: adjusted for the country’s population, it would correspond to over 14 million domestic tourists. Admittedly, East Germany was an extreme case. A lesser-known fact is that, statistically, East Germans took slightly more holiday trips per capita than even their West German counterparts—despite restrictions on freedom of travel and the impossibility of vacationing in the West.[9] While it is unlikely that North Korea will reach comparable numbers in the foreseeable future, a rapidly growing demand for domestic vacations can nonetheless be expected once a critical mass is achieved. This may be accompanied by frustration among those excluded—whether due to a lack of financial or political capital, or simply because of the supply shortages typical of socialist systems.
Vacation systems in authoritarian and socialist states have historically functioned as sophisticated instruments of social control, political loyalty, and regime legitimation. It is therefore likely that the Wonsan-Kalma resort was designed with similar objectives in mind and will be interpreted accordingly. However, as the East German case illustrates, the effectiveness of such systems has limits and may entail certain risks—some of which are outlined below:
Shifting expectations: Once holiday travel had become a normal part of life, the expectations of East German tourists began to shift. They then placed great value on individual experiences and paid little attention to ideological guidelines or intentions. Loyalty to the state was no longer tied to the mere fact of being able to travel, but to the quality of the travel experience itself—a challenge the GDR ultimately failed to meet for economic reasons. If the opening of the Wonsan-Kalma resort indeed marks the beginning of mass domestic tourism in North Korea, the regime may eventually face a similar challenge.
Declining loyalty effect: By the early 1980s, even political elites such as FDGB Chairman Harry Tisch acknowledged that citizens simply wanted a holiday; that state interference in how these holidays were organized was best kept to a minimum; and that many people were largely indifferent to attempts to instrumentalize vacations as a means of fostering political loyalty.[10]Assumptions about the effectiveness of Wonsan-Kalma holidays in increasing loyalty to the North Korean regime—whether made by the regime itself or by outside observers—should therefore be approached with caution.
Emergence of alternatives: Notably, it has been observed that alternative forms of vacationing emerged in East Germany alongside the state-organized travel system. In addition to entirely private stays, these included company-funded holiday homes and campsites. The latter were particularly popular despite their very modest facilities, as they offered a maximum degree of individual freedom and, in a sense, a “holiday from the state.” In 1987 alone, 2,194,100 overnight stays were recorded at campsites.[11] If one applies this observation to North Korea, it suggests that in the coming years, we might first see an expansion of company-run holiday facilities, followed—potentially—by the emergence of more individualized forms of domestic tourism.
Why, and Why Only Now?
Considering the many potentially positive effects of domestic mass tourism as an instrument of social control, political loyalty, and regime legitimation, the surprising issue is not that the North Korean leader decided to use that instrument.[12] Instead, we should ask why this is happening at such a large scale only now, more than seven decades after the foundation of the DPRK.
Legitimacy: The case of KdF shows that such efforts can indeed enhance a regime’s legitimacy and acceptance. As Spode notes, even the underground opposition to the Nazi regime was alarmed by the fact that the KdF program had a strong positive effect on the initially skeptical people’s loyalty to the regime: “Holiday politics promised a solution to the regime’s conflicting aims: taming the working class and preparing for war.”[13] Perhaps we should see the opening of the Wonsan-Kalma resort in connection with the dispatch of North Korean troops to support Russia in its war on Ukraine?
Social control: Hachtmann may offer insights into North Korea’s decision to invest in a single large-scale resort rather than in multiple smaller and less costly facilities. He argues that mass tourism destinations such as the seaside resort at Prora offered significant advantages from the regime’s perspective: in a Fordist manner, they allowed for much more effective and efficient control over visitors.[14]
Growing popular pressure: Görlich argues that, following the construction of the Berlin Wall, the East German leadership began to assign less importance to state-organized vacation services. With the threat of mass emigration to the West effectively neutralized, the regime no longer felt compelled to cater to popular demands to the same extent.[15] If this logic is inverted, one might infer that the North Korean leadership now perceives a growing need to accommodate the preferences of its population—perhaps as part of a broader strategy to maintain regime stability and legitimacy under evolving internal conditions.
Absence of precedent: No equivalent to the KdF system or its precursors existed in North Korea during or prior to the Japanese colonial period. This lack of historical precedent may help explain why mass tourism in the DPRK has only recently begun to emerge—many decades after the country’s founding in 1948. In contrast, mass tourism in East Germany developed almost immediately following the establishment of the GDR in 1949, as its leaders had to accommodate pre-existing public expectations.
Link between mass tourism and middle class: In addition to political and ideological motives, economic considerations play a prominent role—especially when viewed in a broader historical context. Globally, the rise of mass tourism has been closely linked to the emergence of the middle-class consumer as early as two centuries ago.[16]
Absorbing excess purchasing power: Mass tourism initiated by the KdF served as a tool to siphon off purchasing power without depleting the scarce foreign currency reserves required for rearmament: “With KdF mass tourism—over ninety percent of which remained domestic—a significant share of consumption could be redirected to areas that only marginally increased consumer goods production and required hardly any imports.”[17]
More than seven decades of development, including two decades of tentative market-oriented reforms, have led to the slow but steady accumulation of wealth in North Korea. Reports about smartphones, cosmetic surgery, driving schools, and other phenomena suggest that millions of North Koreans have moved beyond the basic level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The country is now experiencing significant inflation, likely the result of excessive liquidity combined with a shortage of consumer spending opportunities. In this context, domestic tourism could fulfil a similar function as it did in Nazi Germany: absorbing excess purchasing power and stabilizing the economic system without relying on imports.
Spending opportunities and social incentives: In a related sense, having substantial, hard-earned income but limited opportunities to spend it can be deeply frustrating. Services such as domestic tourism provide a convenient outlet for the middle class to enjoy their earnings and display their social status. At the same time, they may serve as an incentive for others to strive for upward mobility in order to one day participate as well.
Open Questions
The cases of Nazi Germany’s KdF and of East Germany’s FDGB are historically unique and thus offer limited comparability to North Korea, but nevertheless prompt important questions, such as:
How are vacations to Wonsan-Kalma allocated? We would expect a mix of 1) a heavily subsidized form and based on loyalty and work performance via the General Federation of Trade Unions (조선직업총동맹), and 2) lower subsidies and based on market rules through the state travel agency and its regional counterparts.
What is the true purchasing power and size of the North Korean middle class? As the example of the Dopolavoro in Italy shows, in the first year, 1931, more than half a million Italians used the new opportunities at discounted prices. However, the number then dropped to only about 100,000 per year due to too low incomes.[18]
How strong is the state’s will and ability to subsidize domestic tourism? Both KdF and FDGB offered vacations at heavily subsidized prices.
How will the impact of the resort change over time? As Spode notes: “In the beginning, the propaganda effect was considerable, but the more KdF lost the aura of sensation, it ceased.”[19] In East Germany, after initial euphoria, many tourists were no longer satisfied with domestic travel and demanded more, better, and even international vacations, which was neither economically viable nor politically acceptable for the regime at a large scale. Such unfulfilled tourism desires contributed to an overall sense of frustration that eventually brought down the regime.
Will the resort be supplemented by additional projects? Both the KdF and the FDGB eventually expanded their offerings to include cruise ships. It is also noteworthy that KdF supported initiatives such as the Volkswagen (“people’s car”) scheme. Could a similar symbolic project—perhaps even a North Korean “people’s car”—be among Kim Jong Un’s future promises to the population?
Will North Korean companies build holiday homes for their employees? The concept of company-operated holiday homes as seen in the former Eastern Bloc is so far not widely documented for the average North Korean citizen. Only certain elite groups and high-ranking officials have access to state-run rest homes or exclusive resorts.
Some of these questions will only be answerable a few years from now, others require insights into the North Korean system that we do not have. But they help us to sharpen our analytical focus and to guide our search for a better understanding of the New North Korea as it presents itself under the new geopolitical conditions since 2022.
