Quick Take: A Day at the Seaside  

Commercial satellite imagery from August 19 has captured hundreds of colorful tents on the beach at Chongjin as hot mid-summer temperatures send North Koreans to cool off. 

Chongjin is located roughly 340 kilometers northeast of Wonsan-Kalma, where a massive new beach and tourist zone opened earlier this summer. While Chongjin can experience slightly cooler weather, it does not appear to have stopped hundreds of people from enjoying a day by the sea. 

According to Korean Central Television’s daily weather forecast, the temperature in Chongjin was predicted to reach 29°C (84°F) on the date the image was captured.  

At a beach just south of the city, tents are lined up along the shoreline, tightly packed together. The close proximity could be to provide maximum coverage from the sun. A series of tents are also lined up along the beach closest to the city, likely of different vendors. Each of those vendor tents appears to correspond with a specific cluster of tents on the beach, suggesting there may be some commercial or organizational link between them. 

On a smaller beach just southwest of the boat basin—where North Korea constructed and failed to launch a new naval destroyer earlier this year—many more tents are tightly-packed and similar vendor tents are present. However, the link between a vendor tent and a specific grouping is less clear than at the other end of the site. People are also visible in the sea. 

While the newly-opened Wonsan-Kalma Beach Resort continues to attract state media attention, Korean Central Television also reported on July 24 that a new beach facility at Jasan, positioned about 20 kilometers southeast of Wonsan-Kalma, was also opened.