North Korea's famous Mount Kumgang listed as Unesco World Heritage site

The Star

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Autumn foliage blankets the rocky cliffs of Mount Kumgang in this drone image aired by North Korea's state broadcaster on October 24, 2023. The mountain was officially added to the UNESCO World Heritage list on Sunday under the name -- Mt. Kumgang – Diamond Mountain from the Sea. Photo: Yonhap via The Korea Herald / Asia News Network
PARIS, July 13 (Bernama-Yonhap): North Korea's Mount Kumgang, a scenic mountain known for its beauty that changes with the seasons, has been named a Unesco World Heritage site, reported Yonhap News Agency.
Unesco added Mount Kumgang to its World Heritage list following the 47th session of the Unesco World Heritage Committee in Paris on Sunday.
The official name of the place entering the list is "Mt. Kumgang - Diamond Mountain from the Sea."
In May this year, the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which serve as advisory bodies to the World Heritage Committee, had recommended the inclusion of Mount Kumgang on the Unesco World Heritage list.
Unesco's website describes Mount Kumgang as "a strikingly beautiful mountain with numerous peaks and curious rocks amounting to some 12,000 waterfalls and pools formed by crystal-like clear waters flowing from hundreds of gorges, as well as with the seascape stretched along the coastline."
"Mt. Kumgang is permeated with numerous legends and cultural relics handed down through generations," the site noted.
After Mount Kumgang's inscription became official, members of the North Korean delegation rose from their seats and held up their national flag in celebration.
In an executive summary of Mount Kumgang's entry, Unesco noted that the mountain is "a mixed natural and cultural heritage and also a cultural landscape, showing a variety of landscapes of exceptional natural beauty and significant evolving physiographical features."
"The property contains Korea's most significant Buddhist mountain culture and tradition of mountain worship and pilgrimage over many centuries," it said.
"The property boasts outstanding scenery of lofty peaks, valleys, waterfalls, pools, lagoons and dramatic seascapes."
North Korea submitted its application for World Heritage inscription in 2021, but the site's review was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation resumed this year.
Mount Kumgang is North Korea's third World Cultural Heritage site, joining the Complex of Koguryo Tombs inscribed in 2004 and the Historic Monuments and Sites in Kaesong in 2013.
In 2014, North Korea also had "Arirang, lyrical folk song in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea" inscribed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. - Bernama-Yonhap