NORTH KOREA is missing the Winter Olympics for the first time in 12 years: none of its athletes qualified for Sochi. But who cares? Kim Jong Un, the North’s young dictator, has olympian ambitions of his own. On Mount Taehwa in the east of the country skiers in bright orange and green suits are swooshing down the pistes to prove it. Perhaps galled that Pyeongchang, a South Korean city, won the bid to host the next round of winter games, in 2018, Mr Kim set his sights on a winter resort—a first for North Korea—when he came to power two years ago. The Masikryong Ski Resort, which has just opened, sits at an altitude of 768m. Snow falls when Siberian winds meet moist air from the Sea of Japan. Built to the elevation standards of the International Ski Federation, Mr Kim wants Masikryong to best all other Asian resorts. Soldiers from the Korean People’s Army were enlisted for the building spree. They were still packing snow over patchy runs when foreign visitors were recently allowed to admire the complex. But the speed with which the resort went up is a point of national pride: North Koreans everywhere are now urged by the relentless propaganda to emulate the “Masikryong speed” which in just ten months conjured up ski lifts to nine different pistes, a fancy hotel, a heliport and a skating rink.

The quality of the resort is striking. Canadian snowmobiles, Swedish snow-blowers and Italian snow-ploughs grace its slopes (international sanctions are meant to ban imports of “luxury” items, and these are hardly essentials). The Masikryong Hotel boasts a swimming pool, sauna and karaoke facilities, and its chalet-style suites come complete with monogrammed dressing gowns. A restaurant at the summit of Mount Taehwa offers panoramic views (though the 40-minute ride up, on three sets of rickety chair-lifts from China—pictured—may put some off). The 1,400-hectare resort is said to have cost the regime $35m.

The winter wonderland is only one of Mr Kim’s pet projects. In power since the death of his father, in Pyongyang, the capital, he has presided over the opening of a water park, a dolphinarium and a riding club. Andrei Lankov, a professor of Korean history at Kookmin University in Seoul, says that Kim Jong Un wants to tell his people that, under him, they “are going to enjoy life”. After years of hardship, for many that would make a nice change.

Barely a few thousand North Koreans probably know how to ski, members of Pyongyang’s tiny but ultra-wealthy elite. The resort says it wants to attract fully 5,000 people daily. Right now, only a few hundred skiers take to its slopes each day. Even with army labour, it is hard to know how the regime can recoup its investment.

The source of the country’s building boom, centred on Pyongyang, is also a bit of a mystery given the country’s dire economic situation. Sanctions restrict international lending to the rogue regime; former sources of foreign exchange—money earned on arms, drugs and counterfeit cash, for instance—have dried up. Some think the showy pieces are evidence that Mr Kim is exhausting his foreign currency reserves. Rumours that he has been selling off part of the country’s gold reserves to China suggest so too.

Tourism may be Mr Kim’s quick fix. It brings cash without the tricky business of economic or political reform. Mr Lankov says that Mr Kim has instructed state companies to boost numbers of foreign tourists from 200,000 a year to 1m by 2016. Most are currently day-trippers from China. Many come to taste a bit of Communist-era nostalgia—a reminder of what their own country felt like four decades ago. But with new fancy diversions such as skiing, the hope is that visitors will stay longer and spend more. It is going to be an uphill battle.

(Picture credit: The Economist)