By DPA
Seoul : A planned summit between North Korea and South Korea later this month has breathed new life into an ambitious plan to turn North Korea into a tourist hotspot.
Few business analysts were impressed when South Korea’s giant Hyundai Asan Corp announced in June its plans to spend $3 billion by 2025 to upgrade and expand its 1.98 billion sq metre concession along North Korea’s coast into a more hospitable tourism destination.
At that time, North Korea appeared to be an unlikely place to attract large numbers of tourists. The country was mainly known for its grinding poverty, brutal dictatorship and nuclear brinkmanship.
But the announcement of a summit of leaders of the two Koreans to be held Aug 28-30 has suddenly shed a glint of hope on the big tourism project by Hyundai, which has been running an exclusive tourism business with North Korea since 1998.
The summit is to be the second between the two countries. The first was held in 2000 in Pyongyang. The second is also to be held in North Korea’s capital. South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun is to travel there for meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
“We expect the second summit to prompt our project aimed at bringing our tourism business in North Korea to a bigger scale and a politically risk-free business,” said Yoon Man-Joon, the chief executive officer of Hyundai Asan.
The Hyundai Asan CEO said that since it submitted the proposal in June, the company has been awaiting approval from North Korea for the project and expects its plan to be confirmed by September.
The special tourism zone is located just over the demilitarised zone on the Korean Peninsula’s eastern sea border.
Hyon Jong-Eun, chairperson of Hyundai Asan Group, will be among the business leaders accompanying President Roh to the North Korean capital for the summit.
In the shadow of the political risks from North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, the number of visitors at the Hyundai Asan-run Mount Kumgang, located just north of the border between the two Korea’s east coast, has widely fluctuated between its high of 301,822 in 2005 and its low of 238,497 in 2006.
“I often felt like I was on a wild roller coaster ride each time North Korea chilled the world with its nuclear-weapons card,” Yoon said.
“In times of tension, we were running an almost-empty bus with only 20 persons a day crossing the border heading to Mount Kumgang,” he added.
Since its launch in 1998, the North Korean tourism project has seen an accumulated total of 1.5 million visitors, including 10,000 non-Koreans, visit Mount Kumgang, according to Roh Ji-Hwan, a spokesman for Hyundai Asan.
The number has fallen far short of its initial expectations because of restrictions imposed by the North Koreans. Many young South Koreans said they are unwilling to take the trip because they are not allowed to have casual contacts with local North Korean people.
Hyundai Asan officials said the picture has improved since the company began offering bus rides across the borders instead of requiring visitors go by ship. The company has also improved service and expects interest to get another boost when a railway connection is added soon.
“At first, it was mostly homesick senior citizens. But in recent years there are more students and campers, corporate workshop attendees and baby boomers in their 40s and 50s going to Mount Kumgang,” said Roh.
The cost for a two-night stay at Mount Kumgang ranges from 290,000 won ($315) to 490,000 won ($530) depending on the season and which hotel is chosen.
Hyundai Asan hopes the summit will increase its chances to meet its 2007 target to attract 400,000 visitors to North Korea’s Mount Kumgang.
In a country shunned by most of the world, where GDP growth is barely above one per cent a year and millions are hungry, tourism is an important source of cash for North Korea.
Hyundai paid almost $1 billion to the North Korean government for exclusive rights to run the vacation destination, and later spent an additional $400 million building the resort.
The alpine resort of Mount Kumgang employs between 400 and 500 North Koreans, including 300 at the Kumgangsan Hotel, according to Roh.
He said the North Korean workers at Mount Kumgang are paid as much as their peers working at the industrial complex in the eastern border city of Kaesong, another enclave of South Korean business in the North.
North Korean workers in Kaeseong this week were granted their demand for a 5 percent wage increase. They now earn $60 to $70 per month.
At a time when a growing number of South Koreans are flocking to Japan to play golf, Hyundai Asan hopes some of them will switch to North Korea. Hyundai is planning to partially open a brand new 18-hole golf course in October near Mount Kumgang.
“We are going to hold a golf tournament at the new golf course in October,” the spokesman said.