culture

The Onpho Working People’s Holiday Camp opened in February after being completely renovated as a comprehensive cultural recreation and medical service base.

A large number of working people now visit it to enjoy themselves.

Holiday camp for working people

The word onpho means a hot spring.

The Onpho hot spring has been well known for being very good for human health and medical treatment since olden times.

As for its pharmacological effect, the hot spring helps treat such diseases and conditions of chronic gastritis hyperacida, chronic enterocolitis, chronic bronchitis, mild diabetes, obesity, neuralgia, eczema, urticaria and autonomic nerve dysfunction.

The Onpho hot-spring area, which is in a quiet valley surrounded by high and low mountains, is the best for climate and spa therapy as the hot spring never dries up all the year round.

It was in 1947, after Korea was liberated from the Japanese imperialists’ military occupation (August 15 1945), that a holiday camp for the working people was built in the area. It is said that hundreds of thousands of working people visited the camp for 70 years from then to 2017.

In July 2018, General Secretary Kim Jong Un visited the Onpho Working People’s Holiday Camp in North Hamgyong Province during his field guidance over various sectors of the province. At that time, he gave instructions that the holiday camp in the famous hot-spring area should be newly built into a comprehensive cultural recreation and medical service base so that the people can receive spa therapy while enjoying highly-civilized cultural and leisure activities.

While giving his field guidance over the construction project in March 2025, he learned in detail about the progress in the construction and set forth important tasks to be tackled in the construction of the holiday camp and its future management and operation.

Last January, the General Secretary attended the inaugural ceremony of the Onpho Working People’s Holiday Camp spruced up as a monumental edifice that can represent the hot spring culture of the country and was so pleased to see another excellent cultural life base for the people that he cut the inauguration tape and looked round different places of the holiday camp.

Without knowing the passage of time

On arrival at the holiday camp, holidaymakers make for spas, eager to enter the world of hot spring civilization, after taking off their travelling attire.

There are indoor and outdoor spas, and they are connected by an access corridor so that people can move freely between them at any time.

People beam warming themselves in the steamy pools of the indoor spa.

March is spring in the country, but trees and several places of the outdoor spa are still covered with snow in contrast to the steamy pools there.

To enjoy the distinctive feelings aroused by the circumstances, people soak in diverse forms of pools, cheerfully laughing with joy and optimism.

After sweating in spa bath, they get out of the pools and lie on recliners to cool themselves or go to the soft drink stand to refresh themselves while enjoying the view of the spa.

Strolling round the camp in the fresh air also produces therapeutic effects.

Jo Mi Suk, director of the holiday camp, who has been working at the holiday camp for over three decades, said it is climate therapy as effective as spa therapy, adding that the air in the Onpho hot-spring area is clear and clean and rich in anion and that the view of the modernized holiday camp might produce better therapeutic effects as it adds to the holidaymakers’ sense of security and happiness.

Around the spa there is a spa treatment facility which has rooms for the combination of spa bath and sand bath, underwater traction for the treatment of spinal diseases, limbs bath, inhalation and so on, where the holidaymakers receive kind medical services from medical workers.

Mun Kil Nam, a worker of the Musan Mining Complex, said, “I had suffered from a vascular disease and arthritis for three years. After getting a variety of treatments in the spa treatment facility for a week, I found the symptoms of my diseases starting to improve. My heels had been cold and my knee joints ached even in summer. Now the symptoms have disappeared.”

After getting spa therapy, the holidaymakers get such services like haircut and beauty treatment at various welfare service facilities or have a good time playing sports and amusement games at a gym, sports park, table tennis house and indoor golf course.

The night of the holiday camp inspires optimism in the holidaymakers in its own way.

They are reluctant to sleep relishing the view of the brightly-lit holiday camp while having photos taken here and there.