Destinations known | North Korea demolishes Singapore-built floating hotel doomed to fail, along with other South Korean tourist facilities at Mount Kumgang
- Launched in 1998, the hotel, which operated in Australia and Vietnam before mooring at resort town Mount Kumgang, ran aground on a series of unfortunate events
- North Korea’s removal of Mount Kumgang infrastructure, which had symbolised rapprochement between Seoul and Pyongyang, appears to have come as news to the South
Question: what is the connection between the Four Seasons Barrier Reef Resort, the Saigon Floating Hotel and North Korea’s Hotel Haegumgang?
Answer: they were all the same property. And a property that was built in Singapore, to boot.
Unfortunately, it looks as though there will be no further incarnations for this peripatetic floating hotel, as various news reports claim Pyongyang is in the process of demolishing it, along with other South Korean tourist facilities in the Mount Kumgang recreational area.
On the east coast of the Korean peninsula, just to the north of the military demarcation line, Mount Kumgang once symbolised rapprochement between Seoul and Pyongyang. In 1998, tourists from South Korea began crossing the border to visit Kumgang (Diamond Mountain) and in 2002, extensive infrastructure – including several hotels – was built. It is estimated that by July 2008, more than a million South Koreans had visited, but in that month, one of their number – Park Wang-ja – was shot dead, for having wandered into a military area, according to Pyongyang.
Between then and the Covid-19 lockdowns, a trickle of Chinese tourists visited the area, but it is believed most of the facilities had stood idle for years when, in 2019, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un described the project’s buildings – mostly constructed by South Korean company Hyundai Asan – as “a hotchpotch with no national character” and likened them to “makeshift tents in a disaster-stricken area or isolation wards” before ordering that they be destroyed.