North Korea’s Kim orders hotels, tourist facilities at resort destroyed

Kim Jong Un reportedly ordered South Korean-made hotels and other tourist facilities at a resort in North Korea to be destroyed.

The Associated Press, citing the official Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang, reports that Kim visited the Diamond Mountain resort recently and described the facilities’ conditions as “shabby” and not up to the standards of North Korea.

{mosads}The North Korean news agency added that Kim knocked policies under his late father that he described as too dependent on South Korea and vowed that he would redevelop the resort site on his own.

″[Kim] said that the buildings are just a hotchpotch with no national character at all, and that they were built like makeshift tents in a disaster-stricken area or isolation wards,” the agency said, according to the AP. “He made a sharp criticism of the very wrong, dependent policy of the predecessors who were going to rely on others when the country was not strong enough.”

Kim’s remarks regarding the resort, which is located just north of the border with South Korea, come as the two countries have enjoyed reduced tensions recently.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in met with Kim three times in the last year and expressed optimism in reestablishing economic engagement between the two countries, the AP noted.

South Korean officials did not directly criticize Kim’s comments, saying they need to take a closer look at North Korea’s intention.

Lee Sang-min, a spokesman of South Korea’s Unification Ministry, said the country will “actively defend the property rights of our people” and will accept any proposed talks with North Korea regarding the resort facilities, according to the AP.

South Korea’s government and companies reportedly built roughly a dozen facilities to accommodate tourists at the Diamond Mountain resort in 1998.