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An image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un conducting field guidance of tourism facilities at Mt. Kumgang released by the Korean Central News Agency on Oct. 23. (Yonhap News)

During a visit to the tourist resort at Mt. Kumgang, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced a comprehensive plan for an international tourism and culture zone while ordering the removal of “all the unpleasant-looking facilities of the south side” and the construction of “new modern service facilities our own way,” North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun reported in a front-page story on Oct. 23. Kim also said that the removal should follow “an agreement with the relevant unit of the south side,” suggesting that the North won’t act unilaterally in this matter.

If Kim’s instructions lead to deliberation between South and North Korea, the results could set inter-Korean relations on one of two vastly different courses — a complete rupture or a dramatic turnaround. This represents a crucial moment for inter-Korean relations, which have continued to deteriorate since the breakdown of dialogue between North Korea and the US in their Hanoi summit.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry released a statement stressing three conditions. “We’re prepared to discuss at any time the protection of South Korean property rights, the spirit of the inter-Korean agreements, and resuming and expanding tourism to Mt. Kumgang,” Unification Ministry Spokesperson Lee Sang-min said.

After looking around facilities at the resort including the Haegumgang Hotel and the House of Culture, Kim said that the buildings “are just a hotchpotch with no national character at all.” Kim slammed the structures as being “shabby” and “unpleasant-looking,” comparing them to “makeshift tents” and “isolation wards.” It’s not uncommon for Kim to resort to such harsh criticism during field guidance.

But the Mt. Kumgang tourism project is one of the legacies of Kim Jong-un’s father and former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Launched on Nov. 18, 1998, following an agreement between Kim Jong-il and Hyundai Group Honorary Chairman Chung Ju-yung, both now deceased, the tourism project helped pave the way for the first inter-Korean summit in June 2000. Since then, it has become a leading symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation, and two million South Korean tourists have visited the site thus far.

That’s why Kim’s orders to tear down the South Korean buildings are shocking and sure to create a controversy both at home and abroad. “It is not desirable to let the south side undertake the tour [business at] Mt. Kumgang,” Kim said. Speaking in more detail, he criticized “the mistaken policy of the predecessors who tried to get benefits without any efforts after just offering [up] the tourist area” and “the very wrong, dependent policy of the predecessors who were going to rely on others when the country was not sufficient enough.” While Kim did not mention his father Kim Jong-il by name, he was effectively criticizing the way in which the “infallible former leader” conducted his legacy project.

Kim Jong-un’s field guidance at Mt. Kumgang, his first since coming to power in 2012, seems to be an attempt to “make the first move and shake things up,” in a bid to get the ball rolling in Korean Peninsula affairs, including the North Korea-US talks, which have been at a deadlock since the Hanoi summit. This was Kim’s first message to the outside world since an Oct. 16 report in the Rodong Sinmun that Kim had conceived of “a great operation to strike the world with wonder” while scaling Mt. Paektu.

Tourism to Mt. Kumgang itself is not subject to UN and US sanctions against North Korea. As a result, the instructions to destroy the South Korean facilities are neither directly connected with those sanctions nor in violation of Kim’s agreement with US President Donald Trump. On the other hand, they do flatly contradict the joint declaration that Kim made with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang in September 2018, in which “the he two sides agreed, as conditions mature, to first normalize the Gaeseong [Kaesong] industrial complex and the Mt. Geumgang [Kumgang] Tourism Project.”

It’s striking that the same leader who stressed his willingness to resume tourism to Mt. Kumgang “without any costs or preconditions” in his New Year’s address has now ordered the buildings demolished, while remarking that the “land is worthy of better” than being “left uncared for [for] more than 10 years.” These instructions could reflect a desire to rattle inter-Korean relations and overcome a long-standing impasse without having a direct impact on North Korea-US relations. Indeed, Kim was accompanied by United Front Department Director Jang Kum-chol, who is in charge of South Korean policy, and First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son-hui, who is leading the negotiations with the US, both unusual choices for field guidance at Mt. Kumgang.

The message that Kim sent at Mt. Kumgang is a complicated one, resonating differently for his domestic and foreign audiences. It was a predictable move given its continuity with North Korea’s three major construction projects at Samjiyon County, the Wonsan-Kalma tourist zone, and the Yangdok County Hot Springs, and it also includes a hint of change in the area of inter-Korean cooperation. While ordering the destruction of the current buildings and the construction of new ones as part of his plan for setting up an international tourist and culture zone at Mt. Kumgang, Kim said these actions should proceed “with an agreement with the relevant unit of the south side.”

Hyundai-Asan, a South Korean company, has an exclusive concession to run the Mt. Kumgang tourist project for 50 years. During the dispute that followed the fatal shooting of Park Wang-ja, a South Korean tourist, in July 2008 — the incident that caused the long-running suspension of the venture — North Korean arbitrarily announced the “confiscation and freeze” of South Korean assets at the resort (April 2010) and the “cancellation of Hyundai’s exclusive concession” (April 2011). To be sure, the South Korean government and Hyundai-Asan don’t consider such announcements to be legitimate.

The question of who holds the rights pertaining to facilities built and operated by South Korea could become a source of friction in future deliberations between the South and North. So far, Hyundai-Asan has only released a terse single-sentence position statement: “Considering that we’ve been preparing to resume tourism there, we were taken aback by this unexpected report, but we will remain clear-headed in our response.”

“[The] Mt. Kumgang tourist area [. . .] should be taken good care of as the cultural tourist area that encompasses Mt. Kumgang, [the] Wonsan-Kalma coastal tourist area, and Masikryong Ski Resort,” Kim said, calling for “construction in three to four stages on a yearly basis after mapping out and examining the master development plan of [the] Mt. Kumgang tourist area.” The North Korean leader also ordered the construction of a tourist airport, a tourist railroad, and a port passenger terminal.

This represents an ambitious plan to link Mt. Kumgang, Wonsan-Kalma, and Masikryong with the hope of attracting foreign tourists once sanctions are lifted. It also fleshes out a plan to create a special tourist zone in Wonsan and Mt. Kumgang, a zone that was designated back in 2002.

“Since Kim Jong-un mentioned an ‘agreement’ by South Korea, we should treat this as an opportunity to exploit that prerogative to make a counterproposal of our own. For us to set up and carry out a new tourism project at Mt. Kumgang with the North, we desperately need a plan to somehow win over the US and the resolution to execute that plan,” said a former high-ranking official in the South Korean government.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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