Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader has ordered that all hotels built by South Korea at its resort should be demolished.
The resort, a famous tourist site, Mount Kumgang was once referred to as a symbol of inter-Korean co-operation.
“The buildings are just a hotchpotch with no national character at all,” Kim said, according to the official KCNA news agency, before likening them to “makeshift tents in a disaster-stricken area or isolation wards”.
He noted it will be better managed without the involvement of the South.
But after visiting the site, Mr Kim said it would be better off being managed without involvement from Seoul.
Mr Kim’s comments echo recent propaganda in the North that stresses the need to prioritise “self-reliance” in order to survive and succeed, BBC report.
The Mount Kumgang resort, in eastern North Korea, was built in the 1990s by South Korean companies on one of the peninsula’s most scenic mountains.
Hundreds of thousands of Southern tourists were allowed to visit the site under strict controls but tours were abruptly suspended in 2008 after a female tourist was shot dead by a North Korean guard.
In 2011 the North seized South Korean assets at the complex and expelled the remaining Southern officials.
“He instructed to remove all the unpleasant-looking facilities of the Southside and to build new modern service facilities our own way,” KCNA said.
Mr Kim said it would be misguided to view the resort as a symbol of North-South relations and instead it symbolised dependence.
“Mount Kumgang is our land won at the cost of blood, and even a cliff and a tree on it are associated with our sovereignty and dignity,” he was quoted as saying.
Mount Kumgang was one of two major inter-Korean economic projects, along with the Kaesong industrial zone, and an important token of cooperation between the two Koreas during decades of hostilities following the 1950-53 Korean War, according to Reuters report.
Relations between North and South Korea are currently at a low point.
The North is angry that the South continues to carry out low-level military exercises with the US, and earlier this summer rejected all further talks with Seoul.
The two countries are technically still at war.
Although the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, a peace treaty was never signed.
