Bizarre images surfaced out of North Korea this week when communist dictator Kim Jong-un attended an event marking the renovation of the Onpho Working People’s Holiday Camp, a hot spring complex featuring hot soaking pools and sauna facilities.
The splashy state propaganda coverage celebrating the Onpho hot spring camp appears to be part of an increasingly active effort by the Kim regime to rebrand the impoverished tyranny into a desirable vacation destination. In addition to the hot springs, Kim Jong-un’s tenure has been marked by the construction of a massive ski and winter sports resort and the development of the beachfront in Wonsan. North Korea has generated minor, though not insignificant, profits from tourism for decades, though its status as a destination took a significant hit following the torture and murder of American tourist Otto Warmbier in 2017.
Kim Jong-un appeared in state media video and photo footage wearing an oversized winter coat, touring the hot spring indoor pools on Tuesday. He was shown sitting on the stairs into the hot spring pool to chat with the swimsuit-wearing individuals enjoying the new facility.
Kim toured the facility after a ceremony outside featuring throngs of people offering “stormy cheers of boundless reverence” in support of the dictator. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), one of the only legal news media in the country, claimed that the “venue of the ceremony was full of excitement and joy of the participants facing the entity of cultural efflorescence brought by the benevolent love of the Workers’ Party of Korea.”
KCNA recalled that Kim visited the hot springs in 2018 and was purportedly outraged by the state of deterioration that the facility was in. Rehabilitating the area thus took eight years.
“Kim Jong Un gave officials a stern warning against their ideological viewpoint and work attitude evidenced by the old and gloomy facilities and service conditions of the holiday camp,” KCNA shared, “and formulated a grand plan to newly construct in a comprehensive way the camp capable of serving the convenience of the people and fully meeting their growing cultural and emotional demands and make the precious wealth of the country render a sincere service to the people.”
Speaking at the event, Kim reportedly stated that the hot springs had offered “the base for civilization” and demanded appropriate care.
“It is an important component of the people-oriented policy of our Party and government to actively develop the natural resources of the country,” Kim reportedly said, “to contribute to the improvement of the people’s well-being.”
Kim heralded the hot springs as a “creation of socialist civilization with persevering and innovative pioneering and progress.”
“He noted that new tourist resorts, holiday camps and sanatoriums are being built across the country on a large scale for the improvement of the people’s well-being,” KCNA added.
Reports indicated that the Onpho facility would be fully open in February. North Korea operates under a strict system regulating the daily lives of its citizens called “Songbun,” which ranks every person based on their loyalty to communism. Only those of highest rank in the songbun system are allowed to enter the national capital, Pyongyang, and to access spaces of luxury. The vast majority of the country is starving, impoverished, and banned from freely traveling, worshipping, purchasing food, or engaging in any media not created by the communist state. Those caught consuming foreign media could be forced into labor camps for decades or executed.
Freedom of religion is perhaps the most repressed in the country. North Korea actively persecutes those who do not worship Kim Jong-un and his family as gods. The Christian humanitarian organization Open Doors ranked North Korea the number one worst place to be a Christian in the 2026 edition of its annual World Watch List, released last week.
“North Korea is arguably the most dangerous place on earth to follow Jesus,” Open Doors explained. “If someone is discovered to be a Christian, the consequences are unimaginably stark: either imprisonment in one of its notorious labour camps, with little hope of release, or immediate execution. The same fate is likely to await other family members.”
On Friday, following up on the international curiosity about Kim Jong-un’s foray into hot spring management, KCNA announced that North Korea had opened a new beachfront tourist zone in Yombunjin Coastal Park Area. Kim did not personally attend that event, according to reports by the South Korean news agency Yonhap, but officials celebrated the area as featuring hotels and beach facilities.
“The completion of the Yombunjin Haeyang Hostel, which can accommodate hundreds of guests,” KCNA shared, “and has a cinema, shop, e-game hall, wading pool and other service facilities, and a bathing beach enables our people to enjoy socialist civilization to their heart’s content at the cultural resort preserving charm and features peculiar to the coastal area.”
KCNA, of course, credited “the noble intention and energetic leadership of the respected Comrade Kim Jong-un” for the beach resort.
Yombunjin serves as a second beachfront resort for interested tourists. Last year, the regime debuted the completed Wonsan Kalma Tourist Area, also offering beaches, swimming, and coastal nature for regime-approved visitors.
North Korea has for years mostly served domestic elites with tourism, or Chinese nationals willing to cross the border for “Red Tourism,” a practice in which often elderly Chinese visit sites relevant to the communist Kim family myth as a nostalgia exercise, having experienced the darkest days of Chinese communism.
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