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A Luxury Hotel You Can’t Stay At: The Ananti Kumgang Mountains

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: Kumgang Mountains, North Korea
August 14, 2012 at 12:49 PM | by | Comments (0)

With hotels opening all over the world, including some of its most remote corners, there are few places that we never read about in all the coverage we see week after week. North Korea is one of those however, and we’ve previously said their Hotel of Doom, surely the world’s longest hotel delay, really didn’t have to open for us at all.

Browsing around the website of GHM Hotels to read about their development plans for The Chedi brand, we were surprised to see a reference to a hotel in North Korea: The Ananti Kumgang Mountains.

In case you had any hopes of visiting though, you can’t: the hotel is not operational until further notice due to the border closure between North and South Korea.

Situated at the foot of Mount Kumgang (Diamond Mountain), the resort lies within a special administrative region of North Korea, which was created in 2002 as one of the few places accessible to tourists from the outside world. Mostly South Korean visitors would come to this area on the eastern coast for its scenic beauty, reached by a single road through the Demilitarized Zone.

In 2008, a South Korean tourist was shot and killed while walking on the beach, with the North Korean government claiming that she entered a military area. South Korea suspended tourism to Kumgang immediately after, with all access closed not much later.

Should the resort open again one day, guests can choose one of 96 rooms, enjoy a spa and hot springs with views of the surrounding mountains, as well as an 18-hole championship golf course. Until that time, there are the golf courses (but no rooms) at the luxe Ananti Club Seoul, a 30-minute drive from South Korea’s capital in the Yumyeongsan forest.

As for The Chedi, following a less-than-successful stint in Milan, the brand is expanding significantly over the next few years from its current three resorts, and in a kaleidoscope of locations. First up is The Chedi Suzhou, still scheduled for this year. 2013 will see The Chedi Tamouda Bay, Morocco, and The Chedi Andermatt, Switzerland. Taiping Lake (China), The Chedi Qutub (New Delhi), and Kuala Lumpur are on the books for 2014, with The Chedi Khorfakkan, Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) completing the current list in 2015.

[Images: GHM Hotels]

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