It is understood that race goers 12 or older were allowed to bet on jockeys through a lottery system at the end of the competition.
According to a report from Reuters on Monday, experts see the move as the latest method for the isolated country to ride out a series of international sanctions, which has placed bans on key exports such as coal, textiles and seafood.
"Kim has been pushing for vanity projects for a theme park, sky resort and the horse riding club for the sake of propping up the people’s well-being but their real purpose was to earn foreign currency,” said Na Jeong-won, head of the North Korea Industry-Economy Research Institute in Seoul to Reuters.
Lee Sang-keun, a researcher at the Institute of Unification Studies of Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the leisure facilities targeted affluent North Koreans.
"You may have ridiculed Kim Jong Un for constructing lavish facilities while struggling to feed the people, but those things are to make foreign currency, not from foreigners but from the well-offs inside North Korea because you have to pay in US dollars or Chinese renminbi there,” he said.
Source: GMB / AG Brief
