Some Russian citizens will be the first foreigners to visit North Korea since early 2020, when it closed its borders to travelers to limit the spread of Covid-19. This was announced by the governor of Primorsky Krai, the region in the Russian Far East where Vladivostok is located, on the border with North Korea. North Korea is one of the most closed countries to outside influences, and visiting it was very difficult even before 2020. All tourist trips are organized by one of the state-owned travel agencies, and interactions between foreigners and locals place are always strictly controlled.
According to a tour operator active in Korea heard from Reutersa single trip is not enough to hypothesize a general reopening of the country to tourism, but it is still a “positive step forward” after four years of closure.
Before the pandemic, foreign tourists, especially Chinese ones (around 120 thousand in 2019), represented a modest but significant income for the stagnant North Korean economy. The reopening was decided during a visit by the governor of Primorsky Krai to North Korea. The tour group will follow a four-day itinerary that will take them to a ski resort and the capital Pyongyang.
In 2016, a US student visiting North Korea, Otto Warmbier, was arrested, apparently for removing a propaganda poster from a wall of his hotel, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison and hard labor. During his captivity he fell into a coma for reasons that were never ascertained, and died six days after returning to the United States, after North Korean authorities agreed to his return due to his serious health condition.
An area that has remained open even in recent years is the Joint Security Area, a short stretch of border between North and South Korea, the only point where the respective armies are in direct contact, where the agreement was signed in 1953. armistice that ended the Korean War. The southern part of the border can be visited on organized tours: in 2023 Travis King, a US soldier stationed in South Korea, illegally crossed the border during one of these tours. He was immediately arrested by North Korean authorities, and was released only months later.
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