Seul, South Korea – a small group of foreign tourists visited North Korea last week, making them the first international travelers to enter the country in five years, except for a group of Russian tourists who went to the north last year.
The last trip indicates that North Korea can be preparing for a complete resumption of international tourism to bring foreign currency so necessary to revive their economy in difficulties, experts say.
The Travel Company based in Beijing, Koryo Tours, said he organized a five -day trip from February 20 to February 24 for 13 international tourists to the border city of the Northeast of Rason, where the country’s special economic zone is located.
The general manager of Koryo Tours, Simon Cockerell, said that travelers from Great Britain, Canada, Greece, New Zealand, France, Germany, Austria, Australia and Italy crossed land from China. He said that in Rason, they visited factories, shops, schools and the statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, the late grandfather and father of the current leader Kim Jong Un.
“Since January 2020, the country has been closed to all international tourists, and we are happy to have finally found an opening in the Rason area, at the northern end of North Korea,” said Cockerell.
“Our first tour has been and left, and now more tourists are entering in group and private visits, organizing trips,” he added.
After the pandemic began, North Korea quickly prohibited tourists, expelled diplomats and severely reduced border traffic in one of the most draconian restrictions in the world. But since 2022, North Korea has slowly relieved the curbs and reopening its borders.
In February 2024, North Korea accepted about 100 Russian tourists, the first foreigners to visit the country to do tourism. That surprised many observers, who thought that the first post-pandemic tourists would come from China, the largest commercial partner of North Korea and the main ally.
A total of approximately 880 Russian tourists visited North Korea for 2024, said the South Korean Unification Ministry, citing Russian official data. Chinese group tours to North Korea remain stagnant.
This points to how much North Korea and Russia have approached each other, since the north has supplied weapons and troops to Russia to support their war against Ukraine. The ties between North and China cooled when China showed their reluctance to join an alliance against the United States with North Korea and Russia, experts say.
Before pandemic, tourism was an easy and legitimate source for foreign currency for North Korea, one of the most sanctioned countries in the world due to its nuclear program.
North Korea is expected to open a massive tourism site on the east coast in June. In January, when President Donald Trump boasted of his ties with Kim Jong Un, he said that “I think he has tremendous condominium capabilities.” It has a lot of coast. “That probably refers to the site of the eastern coast.
A return from Chinese tourists would be key to making the North Korean tourism industry because they represented more than 90% of the total number of international tourists before the pandemic, said Lee Sangkeun, an expert at the National Security Strategy Institute, a group of experts led by the Southern Korean intelligence agency. He said that in the past, up to 300,000 Chinese tourists visited North Korea annually.
“North Korea has been investing largely in tourism sites, but there has not been much internal demand,” said Lee. “We can evaluate that North Korea now wants to resume international tourism to attract many tourists from abroad.”
It is likely that the restrictions that North Korea has imposed on foreign travelers, such as the requirements that move with local guides and the prohibition of photography in sensitive places, harm their efforts to develop tourism. Lee said that Rason, the site of the Eastern coast and Pyongyang would be the places where North Korea feels that can easily monitor and control foreign tourists.
