IT’S the showpiece beach resort at the heart of Kim Jong-un’s plans for a holiday empire – but the “North Korean Benidorm” hides a dark secret.
The Wonsan-Kalma resort reportedly got its nickname after dictator Kim sent a fact-finding mission to Spain’s Costa Blanca in 2017.
But unlike its Mediterranean rival, Wonsan-Kalma has a history filled with forced labour, human rights abuses – and poo.
The horrors began right at the start of the project, when the regime press-ganged teenage schoolkids into “shock brigades” of builders.
Pyongyang propaganda bragged that these youths were building the resort’s hotels at the rate of a storey per day in a December 2019 report.
But by then two deadlines to finish the job had already passed, and with a third looming, builders were made to work a