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  Tourism in North Korea: Hyundai's Holiday Gulag

Tourism in North Korea Hyundai's Holiday Gulag

By Wieland Wagner

Part 2: Continue reading about North Korea's capitalist test zone.

Kumgangsan remains a test zone for North Korea. How far can the first successor to the throne in a Stalinist dynasty open up his country without losing control over what is essentially a giant prison? Kim is unlikely to care much that his paying guests are able to cast curious glances at the miseries of stone-age Communism as they pass through this small slice of North Korea. What they see stands in sharp contrast to life south of the border. Thin oxen pull carts across fields devoid of tractors and farm machinery. Few cars take to roads that Kim's subjects use mainly as footpaths. They are often shared only with the bicycles of the privileged. The windows of many houses are kept sealed against the cold with plastic sheeting, and at night the villages are plunged into darkness for lack of electricity.

The darkness makes the bright lights of Hyundai's vacation paradise -- kept burning by its own power supply -- seem all the more glaring. It's a beacon of South Korean capitalism in the gloomy north. Just over more a thousand carefully chosen North Korean workers have access to the area, which is sealed off like a military facility. But nowhere else in this isolated country, whose citizen inmates are neither permitted to travel freely from one city to the next nor receive foreign television stations, can Koreans of the north and south come into such fascinatingly close contact with one another.

One of the more interesting places where such encounters occur is the karaoke bar on the 12th floor of the Kumgang Hotel. Hwang Sang Yoon, an engineer for a Seoul company that manufactures measuring devices, is sitting with a group of coworkers, clapping enthusiastically to the beat of the music, as one of the young North Korean hostess takes to the microphone. On the back of her red outfit, she wears the obligatory pin displaying a likeness of "eternal" President Kim Il Sung.

As the young entertainer starts singing a politically correct love ballad from the land of the Kims, the excited South Koreans push their way forward and sing along. A lively little party forms, and soon North Koreans and South Koreans are introducing themselves and clinking glasses. But when a few guests begin snapping photos of the waitresses -- that too is strictly prohibited -- the horrified North Korean women step aside to avoid being photographed and the mood suddenly cools down.

Engineer Hwang, undeterred, continues to enjoy the rare rendezvous with the beauties from the north. "We are one Korea," he calls out, raising his glass. The women nod graciously. But Hwang later says that one would be hard-pressed to find South Koreans eager to see a hasty reunification with the bitterly poor north, partly out of concern for their own affluence. It's a sentiment the government of South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun shares. Although Seoul supports Hyundai's projects in the north, it does so mainly to help prevent a collapse of the Kim dynasty.

Development ahead of reunificiation

With a view toward future reunification, the south is developing its Gyeonggi border province and building factories there. Industrial use of the region along the border was practically forbidden for many years, leading to economic decline and depopulation -- a situation not unlike that which once occurred in the former West Germany's border regions with then East Germany. But nowadays new investment is celebrated as a signal of a relaxation of tensions, irrespective of whether the six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear weapons program will continue or not.

But Seoul is also supporting its ailing neighbor with plenty of direct aid and cooperation. Last year alone, the south shipped 500,000 tons of rice and 350,000 tons of fertilizer to its poor cousin, while generals from the north and south met to avoid border incidents.

South Koreans are finding it more and more difficult to understand that the United States, the country's most important ally, continues to count Kim's realm as part of its so-called "Axis of Evil." The majority of the population no longer has any personal connection to the Korean War and many South Koreans see little reason to hate the still very unpredictable regime in the north these days. According to recent opinion polls, almost half of South Koreans between the ages of 17 and 23 say that their country should stand behind North Korea if the United States were to attack Pyongyang.

All of this encourages Hyundai to continue expanding its vacation enclaves. Kim Young Hyun, manager of the company's Kumgangsan facility, points enthusiastically at the steep cliffs behind the resort: "Our next project is to develop the inland mountains for vacationers." The company plans to attract ambitious hikers and climbers to the resort with a challenging series of mountain hiking trails.

Hyundai's efforts

The people at Hyundai have devoted their plans to the memory of company founder Chung Ju Yung. In 1998, the patriotic Chung, now deceased, crossed the border into North Korea with an aid shipment of 1,001 cows. In spectacular meetings with dictator Kim, Chung's visit then set the stage for joint projects now being realized.

The company also funneled secret payments to the north, money with which former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung essentially bought his way into a legendary June 2000 summit with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang. When the deal came to light, the head of Hyundai Asan, Chung's son Mong Hun, jumped to his death from the company's Seoul headquarters in August 2003. His widow, Hyun Jeong Eun, has continued her husband's efforts to achieve reconciliation. But although she was given an audience with the "Dear Leader" last July, Hyun soon discovered just how unpredictable doing business with North Korea can be.

When Hyundai fired its key contact to the North Korean regime, a deputy CEO who was accused of embezzling $700,000, the tyrannical Kim took his revenge on the company by temporarily reducing Kumgangsan's daily tourist quota to 600 visitors. He also offered a South Korean competitor the opportunity to take over Hyundai's business, but the company declined. And so Hyundai continues its ventures north of the 38th parallel. According to executive Kim Young Hyun, the company has already turned its first profits with its vacation trips to the north. But, he adds, profits aren't nearly as important as contributing to peace on the divided peninsula.

Hyundai chairwoman Hyun Jeong Eun agrees. When she visited Kumgangsan last year, Hyun's purse was searched by North Korean border guards, who treated her as if she were nothing but an ordinary tourist. But despite this humiliation, Hyun later said, there was only one thing on her mind: "I will not give up."

Translated from German by Christopher Sultan