Prison Island Being Turned Into Resort

An island that used to house one of Vietnam’s most notorious prisons is scheduled to be transformed into a $298 million tourist resort.

A South Korean company, PMC Jinwon, wants to build one of Vietnam’s biggest resorts on Con Son Island, 120 miles south of the port of Vung Tau, the Vietnam Investment Review reported Saturday.

The facility will include two hotels with 600 rooms, a power plant, a golf course, a duty-free shopping center and a cruise ship for 500 passengers.

Con Son, known also as Poulo Condore, is best known for the prison built there by colonial France and operated by the South Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War. Communists and other opponents of the Saigon government were kept there in so-called “tiger cages,” filthy cells where prisoners were held for years and tortured.