Kim Jong Un’s summer retreat Wonsan is a tourist spot and a good place to test missiles; see pics

In the seaside city of Wonsan, North Korean families cook up barbecues on the beach, go fishing, and eat royal jelly flavour ice cream in the summer breeze. For their leader Kim Jong Un, the resort is a summer retreat, a future temple to tourism, and a good place to test missiles. He is rebuilding the city of 360,000 people and wants to turn it into a billion-dollar tourist hotspot. At the same time, he has launched nearly 40 missiles from the area, as part of his accelerated tests of North Korea's nuclear deterrent.

Let's take a look at some of the pictures of Kim Jong Un's summer retreat Wonsan:

This combination of tourism and nuclear weapons is emblematic of Kim Jong Un's strategy for survival, say researchers and people familiar with the project. (Image: Reuters)

North Korea's development plans for Wonsan have mushroomed since they were first announced in 2014. (Image: Reuters)

Tourism is one of a shrinking range of North Korean cash sources not targeted by United Nations sanctions, and the brochures advertise to foreign investors some $1.5 billion worth of potential ventures in the Wonsan Special Tourist Zone, an area covering more than 400 square km (150 square miles). (Image: Reuters)

Kim has already constructed a ski resort and a new airport there.(Image: Reuters)

According to one brochure, the Zone includes approximately 140 historical relics, 10 sand beaches, 680 tourist attractions, four mineral springs, several bathing resorts and natural lakes and "more than 3.3 million tons of mud with therapeutic properties for neuralgia and colitis." (Image: Reuters)

The projects that Kim is inviting investors to help build include a $7.3 million department store, a $197 million city centre development, and a $123 million golf course (including a $62.5 million fee to lease the land). (Image: Reuters)

Earlier this year Kim sent 16 of his officials to Spain to get ideas for Wonsan. They visited Marina d'Or, one of the Mediterranean country's biggest holiday complexes, and the Terra Mitica (Mythical Land) theme park in Benidorm. (Image: Reuters)

The new airport, completed in 2015, has yet to open to international flights. America recently banned its citizens from visiting North Korea. International sanctions now ban all joint ventures with the state. (Image: Reuters)

Even so, the plan is strategically vital for Kim, say former North Korean diplomats. When he came to power in 2011, he inherited a society officially run by the military but whose people survived largely on black market dealings. On paper, North Korea is a state-run economy; but in fact, seven in 10 North Koreans depend on private trade to live, according to Thae Yong Ho, North Korea's former deputy ambassador in London, who staged a high-profile defection with his family in 2016. (Image: Reuters)

Kim Jong Un knows that he can only control society and guarantee his long leadership if his role and influence in the economy is increased. (Image: Reuters)

North Korea wants to attract more than 1 million tourists every year in the near term and around 5 million to 10 million tourists "in the foreseeable future," the Wonsan brochures say. The Wonsan Zone Development Corporation, the North Korean state body which oversees the project, did not respond to requests for comment. (Image: Reuters)

There are no up-to-date statistics on current visitors to North Korea. China said more than 237,000 Chinese visited in 2012 but it stopped publishing the statistics in 2013. For comparison, 8 million Chinese visited South Korea in 2016. (Image: Reuters)

The Korea Maritime Institute, a think-tank in the South, estimates that tourism generates about $44 million in annual revenue for North Korea – about 0.8 percent of the country's GDP. About 80 percent of all North Korea's foreign tourists are Chinese, it says. Westerners and Russians make up the rest. (Image: Reuters)

The Wonsan brochures are welcoming. "Officials and residents of this zone have a good understanding of tourism and are friendly towards tourists," one says. (Image: Reuters)

The brochures also disclose some unusual details about vacation habits in the totalitarian state. (Image: Reuters)

Not far from the proposed $123 million golf course, the plans show an existing compound. It is labeled in the brochure as the summer retreat of the State Security Department or "Bowibu" – the entity which runs North Korea's six prison camps and conducts nationwide surveillance of ordinary citizens. (Image: Reuters)

Just next door to that beachfront property, the Daesong General Bureau – the body also known as "Office 39" that procures luxury goods for the Kim family – has its retreat. (Image: Reuters)

For Kim's security forces, though, Wonsan is about more than fun in the sun. (Image: Reuters)

Kim brought his top military brass to Wonsan in 2014. On the white sandy beach of his palace compound, he ordered his highest admirals to strip into bathing costumes and, as a test of their ability, swim 10 km around the bay, state TV showed. It filmed him at a desk on the sand, shaded by a white parasol. (Image: Reuters)

Official history has not disclosed Kim's birthplace, but many people from Wonsan believe he was born there, partly because he spent his early years at the palace. (Image: Reuters)

People from Wonsan, even those who have defected, say they have largely happy memories of the place. Wonsan's karaoke bars and billiard clubs have a more reliable supply of electricity than much of North Korea, they say. They recall young couples roller skating in a big square near the Wonsan waterfront. (Image: Reuters)

Wonsan holds symbolic power for the Kim dynasty: It was there that Kim Jong Un's grandfather Kim Il Sung, who helped found North Korea at the end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945, first landed with Soviet troops to take over the country. (Image: Reuters)

Statues of North Korea's two former leaders stand on the quayside, where tourists are expected to bow and buy plastic flowers to offer them. (Image: Reuters)

For domestic investors North Korea officially has no tax, but experts say the state raises funds by collecting about 70 percent of the profits of state enterprises. (Image: Reuters)

In April this year, Kim used the beach near Wonsan's new airport to unleash an artillery drill described by state media as the country's largest ever. In it, "300 large-caliber self-propelled guns" opened fire at a white target painted on a small island 3 km away. (Image: Reuters)