North Korea opens doors to international travellers for first time in years

Foreign tourists have visited North Korea in the past week – making them the first international travellers to enter the country in five years, aside from a Russian group in 2024.

The latest trip indicates North Korea may be gearing up for a full resumption of its international tourism to bring in much-needed foreign currency to revive its struggling economy, experts say.

The Beijing-based travel company Koryo Tours said it arranged a five-day trip from February 20 to February 24 for 13 international tourists to the north-eastern North Korean border city of Rason, where the country’s special economic zone is located.

Koryo Tours general manager Simon Cockerell said the travellers from the UK, Canada, Greece, New Zealand, France, Germany, Austria, Australia and Italy crossed by 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 current leader Kim Jong Un.

Mr Cockerell said: “Since January of 2020, the country has been closed to all international tourists, and we are glad to have finally found an opening in the Rason area, in the far north of North Korea.

“Our first tour has been and gone, and now more tourists on both group and private visits are going in, arranging trips.”

After the pandemic began, North Korea quickly banned tourists, jetted out diplomats and severely curtailed border traffic in one of the world’s most draconian Covid-19 restrictions. But since 2022, North Korea has been slowly easing curbs and reopening its borders.

In February 2024, North Korea accepted about 100 Russian tourists, the first foreign nationals to visit the country for sightseeing.

That surprised many observers, who thought the first post-pandemic tourists would come from China, North Korea’s biggest trading partner and major ally.

A total of about 880 Russian tourists visited North Korea throughout 2024, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said, citing official Russian data. Chinese group tours to North Korea remain stalled.

This signals how much North Korea and Russia have moved closer to each other as the North has supplied weapons and troops to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.

Ties between North Korea and China cooled as China showed its reluctance to join a three-way, anti-US alliance with North Korea and Russia, experts say.

Before the pandemic, tourism was an easy, legitimate source for foreign currency for North Korea, one of the world’s most sanctioned countries because of its nuclear programme.

North Korea is expected to open a massive tourism site on the east coast in June. In January, when President Donald Trump boasted about his ties with Kim Jong Un, he said: “I think he has tremendous condo capabilities. He’s got a lot of shoreline.” That likely refers to the eastern coast site.

A return of Chinese tourists would be key to making North Korea’s tourism industry lucrative because they represented more than 90% of total international tourists before the pandemic, said Lee Sangkeun, an expert at the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea’s intelligence agency.

He said that in the past, up to 300,000 Chinese tourists had visited North Korea annually.