Of course, Kim Jong-un’s tourist resorts will fail. Of course, we can help with that.

The following question is multiple choice. Please do not use a number two pencil to blacken the oval on your screen. In April, angry, hungry citizens in North Korea’s remote Ryanggang Province took the brave and desperate step of protesting to local authorities over forced “donations” of food, money, and supplies they were required to make to the construction of —

(a) an orphanage

(b) a grain elevator

(c) a soy-based infant formula factory

(d) a beach resort

If you answered (d), congratulations; you’ve obviously been here before and it shows. The extraordinary part of the story is that the protests worked. The authorities were so afraid of the popular anger that these confiscatory taxes caused that they relented and rolled them back.

Of all the industries that North Korea should be prioritizing — agriculture (which isn’t sanctioned) comes to mind immediately; tourism (which isn’t sanctioned, yet) should not. If North Korea’s climate is no fun during the monsoon or the summer months, it’s bone-chillingly cold in the winter months. To be sure, there will always be a limitless supply of fools who’d rather forego a vacation in Ko Samui or Lisbon and risk getting arrested, shot, or put into an unexplained coma, though I suspect that the supply of these fools is as thin as it is long. Some Chinese tourists visit, but not without risks of their own. In April, a bus accident killed 32 of them who were on a Communist-themed Korean War nostalgia tour.

So who would be the prospective customer base for this obvious sanctions dodge? The government that is most recently inclined to help North Korea dodge sanctions, of course — our staunch “ally,” South Korea. (Park Wang-ja was not available for comment.) As the Masikryong experience taught us, tourism is an industry that can be built into a cash cow with little more than cheap concrete and cheaper labor, including child slave labor. As the Kumgang experience taught us, it also lends itself well to isolation from the local population. The lack of downstream economic entanglements with local folk means it’s also an industry whose hard currency proceeds are easily diverted to any use the regime prefers.

Kim’s enthusiasm for tourist resorts has been a particular sore point with the North Koreans who’ve been mobilized to build them, or taxed to supply and pay for them. The beach resort in Wonsan is not even the most unpopular project. That distinction belongs to the ongoing project to build another resort at Samjiyon, at the foot of Mount Paektu. Tens of thousands of workers and students have been involuntarily mobilized to build it. Kim Jong-un has personally paid three visits to the site and moved up the completion date to October 2020. Even medical students have been pulled away from their studies to do manual labor at the remote site.

And yet, due to shortages of labor, materials, and funds, the project is falling behind schedule. The funding shortage is so acute that officials are “asking” local residents to contribute money for the project. Well-connected traders called donju were making donations to get “indulgences” on illegal business activities. Authorities were even letting people buy their way out of prison for the right price. Rimjin-gang concluded, “[i]t is apparent that the Kim Jong-un regime’s shortage of governing funds is worsening due to economic sanctions.” It didn’t explain the basis for that inference, but it seems reasonable.

Haste did not prove to be a winning strategy for the hydroelectric power industry, and by all accounts, it’s not working so well in Samjiyon, either. In early November, a train carrying men and supplies to the site derailed, seriously injuring three workers. The “shock troop brigades” mobilized for the project — just stop here, mid-sentence, and ponder the idiocy of taking people away from their normal jobs that might involve useful work to build a fucking resort hotel and then having the gall to call them “shock troop brigades” — are complaining about the bitter cold, which means (among other things) that the concrete won’t set properly. The regime diverted electricity away from angry residents and brought in electric heating coils for the concrete. Disspirited workers are now bribing their way out of the “brigades” and returning to their day jobs. Recently, five workers returning from the project died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

If Kim Jong-un really is running out of funds because of sanctions, he could save millions by abandoning these white-elephant projects that are based on the nonsensical idea of turning North Korea into a tourist destination. A part of me wonders if a more effective strategy is to let His Porcine Majesty waste his money on this, until I think of the poor workers who are building it. For all of his questionable choices of governance, choosing to finance the byungjin policy with an industry that could be fatally crippled with one or two easy legislative amendments in the U.S. Congress sounds like epic folly (the text of the amendments follows at the bottom of this post).

The first of these amendments would go beyond the current visa restriction for U.S. passport holders visiting North Korea, and would instead ban all tourist-related financial transactions from the dollar system. Much like the ban on transactions for tourist travel to Cuba, it wouldn’t be air-tight, but wouldn’t have to be to cripple the industry. This would have the added benefit of greatly improving the effectiveness of our sanctions against Air Koryo, which smuggles luxury goods, missile parts, slave laborers, and probably worse things than that. Naturally, exceptions for journalists, diplomats, and humanitarian exceptions should apply. 

The second of these amendments would make North Korea a “country of concern” for purposes of the visa waiver program. In other words, if you come from a country (like South Korea) that allows you visa-free travel to the United States, you’d lose your eligibility for visa waiver if you’ve previously visited North Korea as a tourist. Those two amendments would strongly discourage South Koreans from visiting these new resorts. One wonders if that news would ever reach the North Koreans mobilized to build these money pits. I hope so. They should know the pointlessness of their labor. 

Then, we should ask who will cook and serve the meals, make the beds, maintain the heating systems, and rent the skis and beach chairs at these new resorts. Do you really suppose Pyongyang will take the chance that all those South Korean tourists won’t “forget” their Bibles or religious pamphlets under the sheets or inside the pillowcases — as they absolutely, totally would? That’s why Kumgang used foreign staff, imported by Pyongyang for that very reason. Presumably, those people will demand living wages, which means these resorts will have overhead costs and will need to sustain enough guest traffic to turn a profit.

In the end, Wonsan-Kalma and Samjiyon are certain to fail for the same reason Kaesong, Kumgang, and Young Pioneer Tours also failed: a regime that can’t stop killing its guests, that can’t even limit its brutality to its own people, thus keeping it out of sight and out of mind. Why delay the inevitable?

~   ~   ~

Update: 

Our government tells us we’re doing all we can
Constructive engagement is Ronald Reagan’s plan
Meanwhile people are dying and giving up hope
Well this quiet diplomacy ain’t nothing but a joke

– Artists United Against Apartheid, “Sun City”

SEC. ___. BLOCKING OF TRANSACTIONS INCIDENT TO TOURIST AND COMMERCIAL TRAVEL.

   (a) Notwithstanding section 203(b)(4) of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, (Pub. L. 95-223), and except as provided in subsection (b), the President shall deny any license or permit authorizing any transaction incident to travel to, from, or within North Korea for tourist or commercial activities;

   (b) Suspension, waiver, and termination of authorities.

      (1) The President may waive the sanction described in subsection (a) for the purposes described in section 208 of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, Pub. L. 114-122, as amended (22 U.S.C. 9228).

      (2) The President may suspend the sanction described in subsection (a), subject to the conditions described in section 401 of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, Pub. L. 114-122, as amended (22 U.S.C. 9251).

      (3) The sanction described in subsection (a) shall terminate at such time as the President makes the certification described in section 402 of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, Pub. L. 114-122, as amended (22 U.S.C. 9252).

   (c) Definition of “tourist and commercial activities.”—For purposes of this section, the term “tourist and commercial activities” means any activity with respect to travel to, from, or within North Korea for purposes other than travel for family visits, or for humanitarian, journalistic, educational, diplomatic, consular, or official U.S. government purposes.

SEC ___. DETERMINATION WITH REGARD TO NORTH KOREA AS A COUNTRY OF CONCERN FOR PURPOSES OF THE VISA WAIVER PROGRAM.

   (a) AMENDMENT.— Section 217(a)(12) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1187(a)) is amended —

      (1) in paragraph (12), by striking the words “Iraq, Syria, or” and inserting therefor the words “Iraq, Syria, North Korea, or”; and

      (2) in paragraph (12)(A), by striking the words “Iraq or Syria” wherever they appear, and inserting therefor the words “Iraq, Syria, or North Korea”;

   (b) HUMANITARIAN, JOURNALISTIC, AND OTHER EXEMPTIONS AUTHORIZED.—The Secretary of Homeland Security may promulgate such regulations, policies, and directives as may be necessary to exempt from the consequences of any determination pursuant to subsection (a)—

      (1) any citizen or national of North Korea seeking entry or admission into the United States as a refugee;

      (2) any alien seeking entry or admission into the United States pursuant to section 101(a)(15)(S) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(S)), and who is in possession of, and is willing to provide to the President, critical reliable information concerning activities by the Government of North Korea, or its agents, representatives, or officials, with respect to any of the activities prohibited under section 104(a) of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, Pub. L. 114-122, as amended (22 U.S.C. 9214).

       (3) any alien whose presence in North Korea was in accordance with —

         (A) the purposes described in subsections (a), (b), (c), or (d) of section 208 of the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, Pub. L. 114-122, as amended (22 U.S.C. 9228),

         (B) pursuant to a specific or general license or permit granted by the Secretary of the Treasury, or [Note: humanitarian work is covered by the exemptions in (A) and the licenses in (B).]

         (C) directly incident to, and exclusively for, activities in North Korea by a person regularly employed as a journalist, or to provide technical support for journalistic activities.