North Korea dramatically closed its borders to Western tourists just four weeks after opening them due to travel influencers. A travel company sent a chilling warning to visitors.
North Korea dramatically shut its borders to tourists again and called off future visits after just four weeks – and brazen travel influencers are to blame.
Content creators have been accused of mocking Kim Jong-Un’s country and pulling pranks in the dictator state. Pyongyang slowly opened to Western tourists in February after sealing its borders at the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. The dictatorship dramatically re-sealed its borders for seemingly unknown reasons just a month after, but it has been revealed influencers antics have pushed Westerners away after the five year hiatus.
Instagrammers and Youtubers were accused of speaking negatively about North Korea through videos and pictures posted online – while on fiercely controlled tours. British tourist Mike O’Kennedy shared a “disturbing” clip of a North Korean school dance to his nearly 90,000 followers online.
The clip showed a group of children singing in front of a screen showing missiles blasting off. The content creator mouthed “What the f**k” to the camera when he turned it back to himself.
O’Kennedy also blasted the regime in the video by saying “almost every song that comes out of the DPRK is, as expected, a tool of worship toward the country’s current or former leaders”. He added: “The recurring theme throughout this trip was the utter devotion people had towards… To them, he’s a god.”
The influencer continued to blast the dictatorship even after he left telling Fox News that North Korea was “at least 50 years behind anyone else”. Other vloggers have appeared to rile up Kin Jong-Un by staging pranks in the state. American influencer Hunter Williams posted a vlog claiming he “broke North Korean Laws at their border”.
In the shocking video, Hunter appeared to make his travel buddy try to give a North Korean a book he brought from the US, breaking a strict law against handing out foreign books. Beijing-based travel company Koryo Tours, which organises trips to the closed off nation, sent a chilling warning to tourists to not “mock, distort or disrespect North Korea”.
The tour company said: “We understand that viral content thrives on unique and attention-grabbing moments, but North Korea is not the place to push boundaries. Influencers have been known to try controversial stunts in other destinations, but doing the same in North Korea could have serious consequences.”
The British founder of Koryo Tours, Nicholas Bonner, told The Telegraph there were lots of things North Korean authorities found “sensitive”. He said: “They do not like anyone trying to take pictures of anything to do with the military and they are sensitive around sites like checkpoints.”
Bonner added: “They also do not like pictures that show anyone performing manual labour because they want to portray everything in the country in a positive light. If you want to take pictures of people in a field, for example, they will want them to be smartly dressed and standing up straight.”
Another influencer, Zoe Stephens, also appeared to mock Kim Jong-Un’s nation in her vlog of the hermit nation. She recorded herself standing in front of a statue of North Korea’s dictators where she said “this where we go to pay our respects”, before raising her eyebrows and smiling.
