North Korea could soon be opening up to tourists once again after five years of closer boarders – with tours including visits to a food processing factory and a sea cucumber farm
Tourist will be able to visit North Korea as the first tour to the country which has been closed for more than five years, coincides with the late dictator Kim Jong-Il’s birthday.
Foreign tour companies have been given permission to take international tourists to the city of Rason, in the far northeast of North Korea, to pay their respects to the late dictator. It will be the first time since the country shut its borders during the pandemic in January 2020 that foreign visitors will be able yo enter the country.
The city of Rason is not known for its charms, with attractions visitors will be taken to, including a “combined foodstuff processing factory producing various snacks and drinks” and a “sea cucumber breeding farm.”
The tours will coincide with February 16, the Day of the Shining Star as it is known in the country, – the birthday of Kim Jong-il, late father to the current supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. The day is sometimes celebrated with parades and other commemorative formalities.
One tour company, Koryo Tours is advertising a four-night Kim Jong-il birthday tour for €705 (£586.53), with two additional nights in China. A second company, Young Pioneer Tours, is offering a similar but shorter itinerary for €645 (£536.61).
“We will visit various factories, see a Taekwondo demonstration at the Rason Taekwondo School, and make a stop at the Golden Triangle Bank to learn about Rason’s unique economic system,” Koryo Tours said on its website. “Here, you can even open your very own North Korean bank account.”
However, Koryo Tours also noted that the tour is not yet confirmed and depends on permission to cross by land from the Chinese authorities.
Tourism has always been tightly controlled in North Korea. Individual travellers are not permitted into the country, and groups must be accompanied by ‘minders’. Individual tourism can only be arranged through a select few Government-approved agencies and it must be approved by the Government in advance.
Apart from countries such as China and Russia, who strongly support the country’s regime, diplomats from other countries are rarely allowed to visit North Korea. For example, the British ambassador to Pyongyang, David Ellis, has not been allowed to reside at his embassy since his appointment in 2021.
Tourism in the country is also often thought to be dangerous. In 2016, an American student named Otto Warmbier, was sentenced to 15 years hard labour after he stole a North Korea propaganda banner. He died 15 months later, after he was returned to America in a coma and with brain damage.
His family and Donald Trump claimed he had been tortured, but the North Korean authorities said that his ill health was as a result of treatment for the bacterial disease, botulism.
