SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un opened a lavish new mountain resort complete with “cosy” leisure spaces, barbecue restaurants and hot tubs, state media reported on Tuesday.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the new resort in Samjiyon in North Korea’s mountainous north would serve as an “attractive mountainous tourist resort and leisure ground for the people”.

Kim toured “bedrooms of hotels, cosy leisure spaces and commercial and public catering facilities”, KCNA said.

Images in state media showed Kim accompanied by his daughter, who analysts say is called Ju-ae and is his likely heir, touring the hotels — even testing the firmness of the beds.

He held them up as “clear proof of the ever-growing ideal of our people and our state’s potential for development”.

State media said the new facilities showed the North Korean people were the “most dignified” and have “nothing to envy in the world”.

Not reported was what the fees would be for the average North Korean, who analysts say typically earns up to $3 a month in state-run factories.

Samjiyon carries potent symbolism in North Korean propaganda as it is a stone’s throw away from Mount Paektu, the peninsula’s highest mountain, where official accounts say Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, was born.

Historians largely agree he was actually born in the Soviet Union.

Published in Dawn, December 24th, 2025