North Korea plans to build an underwater hotel. (HT: Thomask on Milepoint)

North Korean authorities have announced an expansive development project for the east coast city of Wonsan that will include the construction of an underwater hotel, a Pyongyang Times article said last Tuesday.

The ambitious plan, which focuses on the construction and development of infrastructure and buildings primarily related to the leisure sector, will see Wonsan become a “tourist city,” the Pyongyang Times said.

“Underwater hotel, flower park, international meeting hall, exhibition and exposition hall, stadium and development areas will be built on the Kalma Peninsula,” the article said, adding that “towers and other modern-style buildings” would be constructed in “large numbers” in downtown area.

…“We have confirmed with our local partners in Pyongyang that there are indeed plans to build an underwater hotel in Wonsan,” Lee said, adding that “local authorities are now in discussions on how to build the hotel”.

And in order to visit the hotel, they need an airport.

Despite the fact that tourists from Wonsan’s two closest neighbors – Japan and South Korea – are unable to currently visit the country, North Korea has already made plans to expand infrastructure in the area to facilitate a hoped influx of investors and tourists.

In 2013 NK News obtained architectural designs from Hong Kong based firm PLT, revealing plans to build a $200 million airport in Wonsan to serve as a major transportation hub for area and the wider Special Tourism Zone.

While Air Koryo’s fare sale didn’t pan out, don’t forget that North Korea — or at least their dictator — does have nice things.

I don’t expect the underwater hotel to open anytime soon. North Korea’s 105 story Ryugyong Hotel is only supposedly ‘close’ to being opened and that project began in the 1980s.

Standard criticism doesn’t seem to go very far, certainly in terms of changing behavior in a country that is among the worst in the world in terms of treatment of its people.

So I’m sympathetic to attempts to mock Kim Jong Un on twitter. And even more sympathetic to be subversive through dance. Towards that end, this is just brilliant:

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