It hasn’t been this difficult to get a glimpse of North Korea in a long time. Between travel restrictions to the reclusive country itself and fraying relations with its neighbors China and Russia, it’s nearly impossible to visit or even come close. A group of North Korea experts working together with NK News aims to provide the next best thing by leading a 10-day group tour of the south side of the inter-Korean border area from Sept. 21 to 30.
“If you’re interested in North Korea, this is the best you can realistically get for a long period of time,” said Andrei Lankov, a renowned Russian scholar and expert on North Korea. “Such a trip gives visitors a sense of how close yet profoundly different the two countries are. It explains why the South is so concerned about the situation, shows how truly impenetrable and tightly sealed the North-South border is, and, of course, presents many opportunities to discuss North Korea, its past and its future.”
The tour is designed both for those who might normally wish to visit North Korea but can’t right now due to the DPRK’s ongoing border closure to most 스포츠 Western countries,” added Chad O’Carroll, founder and CEO of NK News, who will be along on the tour throughout. “Secondly, it’s designed for those with research, professional or academic interests in the DPRK.”
Currently, North Korean tourism is open only to Russian nationals, following years of total closures during the pandemic. Additionally, the U.S. government has forbidden its citizens from visiting for even longer.
“It is somewhat peculiar because the Russian potential as a source of tourists is quite limited. Before 2019, only a few thousand Russians visited North Korea annually. I believe that now, even with the most active promotional efforts, this number is likely to remain in the low tens of thousands,” Lankov said.
He noted that even Chinese tourists, once the majority of the North’s tourist market, have not returned.
“This probably reflects the current North Korean policy. Among others, the DPRK government is trying to play Russia and China against one another, just as they did so brilliantly back in the 1960s and 1970s,” Lankov said.
He said he doesn’t expect North Korea to welcome back Western tourists in the foreseeable future.
“From the North Korean point of view, every Western tourist is a potential source of problems. She can see too much, hear what she is not supposed to hear, and even her presence, her dress and her gadgets send highly undesirable visual signals to the common North Koreans — signals about the prosperity of the supposedly ‘evil and suffering’ capitalist West,” he said. “In the past, North Korean authorities tolerated Western tourists because they needed the money paid by these tourists and some exposure to the Western world. Now, the situation has changed. The amount of money that can be earned by accepting Western tourists is quite small, almost negligible, by their current standards. So, I believe that it will take quite a few years — yes, years, not months — before the first Western tourists reappear on the streets of Pyongyang.”
