North Koreans Eager to Cash in on Tourism

MOUNT KUMGANG (NORTH KOREA) - SOLDIERS, with mini red flags in their hands, lined the 28km-long road leading from the southern border to Mount Kumgang, or Diamond Mountain, on North Korea's east coast.

They are ever ready to raise the flags should they spot any South Korean tourists in the buses taking pictures along the route. For in the vicinity lies a military base that stores artillery pieces capable of reaching Seoul.

But once the buses reach the foot of Mount Kumgang, the contrast could not have been starker.

Signs of capitalism are ubiquitous in the tourist resort, which celebrated its sixth-year anniversary last month. North Korean military forces are a common sight here too, but they are the Youth Shock Brigade - similar to an engineering unit - whose main job is to blaze roads for tour buses.

So far, some 822,200 people have visited the resort, providing the impoverished North with US$500 million (S$817 million) in hard cash. Of the US$1,500 each tourist pays for the three-day tour, US$50 goes to Pyongyang.

Increasingly, North Koreans are finding it hard to resist the lure of hard cash, according to industry officials and tour guides.

'Something unimaginable in the past has been taking place these days,' said Mr Cho Woo Kyung, assistant manager of Hyundai Asan, the South Korean company in charge of the inter-Korean Kumgang project.

'When the tour started six years ago, North Koreans were more concerned with ensuring South Korean tourists did not spit or throw any trash on the mountain. Now, they are much more interested in making money,' he said.

South Korean tour guides attest to a new generation of North Koreans who now aspire to work at tourist sites, a marked difference from the past, when being a soldier was every man's ambition.

'The most popular courses at North Korean universities these days are either foreign languages or tourism-related courses,' said Ms Bae Dul Boon, who has been taking tour groups to Mount Kumgang since 2002.

The 100 North Koreans picked to be tour guides each year have to take an oath of loyalty to the regime, but it is said their families would throw secret parties to mark their new-found fortune.

That is because they would be paid in the greenback, the currency of choice in North Korea's flourishing black market. On paper, US$1 is equal to 150 won, but the rate can go up to 2,500 won in the black market.

The communist regime finds itself in a predicament.

'Pyongyang desperately needs the money to keep its shattered economy running, but it is also concerned as the introduction of capitalist ways could eventually undermine the communist regime,' said Mr Lee Jae Ho, a Unification Ministry official who is involved in inter-Korean talks.

Since the communist state first adopted capitalistic practices such as scrapping its rationing system and allowing private ownership in certain sectors, North Koreans have acquired a 'taste for money', South Korean officials said.

'You need to pay the price,' a North Korean woman told a tourist who was snapping a picture of her. She was selling bottles of traditional diluted liquor, or soju, for US$3 and blueberry wine for US$5 at a street stall.

Former unification minister Jeong Se Hyun told a forum last month that North Koreans working at the resort began accepting tips last year.

Waitresses at North Korean-run Kumgang Hotel sometimes sing to earn tips - in US dollars, of course.