KUMGANG MOUNTAIN, North Korea -- Bags packed, hiking boots tightly laced, visors on, cameras in hand, a few dozen South Korean tourists make their way to an unlikely vacation destination. Their journey, a mere four hours from Seoul, will take them through barbed wire checkpoints, and at their destination they will be greeted by machine-gun-toting soldiers. In cooperation with the government of South Korea and the Hyundai Asan Corp., North Korea is dabbling in the art of making money through tourism, offering a peephole into the Hermit Kingdom for visitors from all over the world. Kumgang Mountain first opened in 1998 after Hyundai Asan paid some $1 billion to the North Korean government for exclusive rights to run a vacation destination. The company spent an additional $400 million building the resort. The 922-square mile complex, located just over the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula's eastern seaboard, sees around 100,000 tourists per year, most of them South Koreans.
North Korean Resort Gives Foreign Tourists Window on Hermit Kingdom
