Tourism in North Korea: the secret state is opening up | Robin Tudge | Comment is free | theguardian.com
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/north-korea-ski-resort-tourism-good
All the hoo-ha that’s surrounded the recent opening of North Korea’s ski resort, framed as it’s been by the western press as the answer to chubby Kim Jong Un’s wont to indulge his Swiss ways, has overlooked the fact that every dollar spent on tourism is a dollar not spent on centrifuges or Mercedes.
I’ve been to North Korea many times since 2002, when I first went to research for a guidebook on the land, and genuinely, a tourist ski resort is really quite a canny investment. Dollar for dollar it has the potential for a far quicker and greater return than investing, for example, in manufacturing industry, which depends on regular supplies of power, raw materials, detailed and up-to-date market data and actual access to international markets, none of which the North has. For a ski resort, the hill’s free, the snow’s free, it’s just up to the tourists to decide to come.