Kim Jong Un and the luxurious swimming-pool ship: a symbol of power in impoverished North Korea
A luxury yacht with a swimming pool and water slides – likely belonging to Kim Jong Un – has emerged as a symbol of the gulf between the North Korean elite and the general population, whilst Wonsan is being transformed into a controlled tourist destination
from our correspondent Marco Masciaga
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NEW DELHI – Water has been at the forefront of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s mind of late. On Saturday, the Pyongyang Navy tested a new torpedo system. On Thursday, a road link with China across the Yalu River was opened. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a submarine launched two strategic cruise missiles into the Sea of Japan.
In its own way, the summer was no less eventful. Kim seems to have spent a fair amount of time aboard a curious vessel some 80 metres long, 50 metres of which were taken up by a four-lane swimming pool with an elaborate maze of slides at one end. This is reported by the BBC, based on a series of satellite images provided by the specialist firm Vantor.
The photographs reveal not only the vessel’s dimensions (thanks to the shots taken whilst it was in winter lay-up at a shipyard), but also its subsequent movements. In early July, for example, the vessel – estimated to have cost tens of millions of dollars – moved off the coast of the Kalma Peninsula, not far from Wonsan, the seaside resort historically associated with the Kim family’s holidays since the time of the family’s founder, Kim Il Sung, the current leader’s grandfather.
According to his biographers and information from intelligence, Wonsan is where Kim Jong Un is said to have spent his childhood with his mother before going to study at a prestigious Swiss boarding school. Today, the Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Zone is the centrepiece of a project strongly championed by Kim and launched last year to create North Korea’s answer to Benidorm and establish a tourism industry, possibly even attracting tourists from abroad (although for the time being the only foreigners allowed in are Russians, who are effectively prevented from interacting with the local population). Among the souvenirs on sale are model missiles similar to those tested at a nearby military base.
According to experts quoted by the BBC, it is highly unlikely that such an extravagant vessel could belong to anyone outside the country’s leadership, one of the poorest on Earth, where the United Nations estimates that in 2024 the GDP per capita stood at $667 per annum, less than one-fiftieth of that of South Korea. It is impossible to estimate the accumulated wealth of the North Korean elite, but the recent military aid provided to Russia – weapons, ammunition and soldiers to be deployed on the Ukrainian front – is likely to have brought substantial funds into the state coffers.
