It has been just a month since the death of Otto Warmbier — an American tourist jailed by North Korean authorities, sentenced to 15 years' hard labor
It has been just a month since the death of Otto Warmbier — an American tourist jailed by North Korean authorities, sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor for pulling down a propaganda poster, and eventually released to the U. S. in a coma under mysterious circumstances .
In at least one sense, then, you could argue it’s an odd time for North Korea to launch a tourism campaign.
Yet that’s precisely what the reclusive country did this week, publishing a new website designed to draw visitors to its “beautiful and picturesque landscape.”
“Today the tourist industry in the DPRK is developing afresh under the wise leadership of supreme leader Kim Jong Un, ” the site says in laudatory tones, using the abbreviation for country’s preferred name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
On offer are beaches where “the water is not so deep, yet clear, the sand is as white as snow” and golf courses that boast “an adequate number of service personnel.” The site also promises a surfing tour, saying “the sea sometimes runs high in some districts, thus giving favourable conditions for surfing.”
And all this to “promote mutual understanding and cultural bonds between people around the world and develop the national economy.
