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Ten days ago, on February 9, 2024, a group of 97 Russian tourists landed in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, for a four-day trip within the country which included a visit to the city and two days in a ski resort. It is the first time North Korean authorities have allowed foreign citizens to visit North Korea since early 2020, when North Korean borders were closed to limit the spread of Covid-19. The trip was interpreted as a first attempt to reopen the country to tourism, a sector that before the pandemic represented one of the few sources of income, and is part of a context of growing collaboration between North Korea and Russia.
North Korea is one of the most closed countries in the world to outside influences, and visiting it was very difficult even before 2020. Now as then, visitors are monitored throughout their trip and are not allowed to interact with ordinary North Korean citizens.
It is no coincidence that the first to enter after the long closure due to Covid-19 were Russian citizens. In recent years, the relationship between North Korea and Russia has become closer, especially after North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia in September 2023. It was the first time Kim Jong Un had been seen outside North Korea in more than four years. Since then, North Korea has supplied Russia with short-range ballistic missiles for use in the war in Ukraine, and Putin has said he would help North Korea build military satellites.
The trip which took place in February was organized by the Vostok Intur agency based in Vladivostok, a port city on the Pacific coast of Russia about a hundred kilometers from the border with North Korea. From there the tourists took the plane that took them to Pyongyang. The price of the package offered by the agency was around 695 euros, a figure that included meals and flights to and from Russia and the internal flight between Pyongyang and the ski resort. In addition to normal tourists, the group also included Russian tour guides and young professional skiers.
Some Russian boys send their skis to the check-in counter at Vladivostok international airport, Russia, before boarding for North Korea (AP Photo)
Travel agency Vostok Intur had recommended not to bring books published outside North Korea about Kim Jong Un’s regime and not to try to move around without supervision. It was also remembered that it is forbidden to photograph or film private houses, ordinary people and soldiers. The statues of Kim Jong Un, as well as those of his father and grandfather, present everywhere in the capital, must always be photographed in full. You can only pose for a photo in front of them in a military-like pose, with your back straight and your arms at your sides. There isn’t much other information about the trip, but in the past these types of organized tours included a visit to the Korean War museum and the Juche Tower, named for the state ideology of the nation’s self-sufficiency and the infallibility of the leader .
The Russian YouTuber Ilya Voskresensky, who was part of the group, he said al Wall Street Journal that she spent a night in Pyongyang and then moved to the Masikryong ski resort, in the south-east of the country, where some North Korean tourists were present. There the group was allowed to ski, although still under the control of North Korean authorities who followed Russian tourists onto the slopes.
In a souvenir shop, Voskresensky said he saw postcards with anti-American slogans and that almost all the children’s games for sale were military-themed. Voskresensky bought his children a set of North Korean rocket-shaped Legos. Throughout the trip the group was able to pay in Chinese yuan or US dollars, but not in rubles.
Before the pandemic, the tourism sector was one of the few channels through which North Korea came into possession of foreign currency, which due to international sanctions is still very difficult to import in any other way. Expanding the tourism sector has long been a priority of Kim Jong Un, who in recent years has ordered the construction of several luxury hotels and resorts by the sea and in the mountains.
According to some independent estimates, in 2019 around 350 thousand foreign tourists visited North Korea, 90 percent Chinese. Until 2017 there were also hundreds of US tourists, who however were banned from entering the country by the US government following the death of Otto Warmbier, an US student who was arrested while visiting North Korea in 2016, it seems for removing a propaganda poster from a wall in his hotel. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment 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 the transfer due to his serious health condition.
– Read also: Italians traveling to North Korea
The next scheduled trip is also organized by the Vostok Intur agency, will include around a hundred people and will leave on 8 March. At the moment these numbers are still too low to be interpreted as a real reopening of North Korea to tourism, but several Russian and North Korean officials have made it known that they are willing to facilitate the entry of Russian citizens into the country: Alexander Matsegora, Russian ambassador in Pyongyang, recently said that the two countries are evaluating the possibility of connecting their two capitals – which are 7 thousand kilometers apart – by rail and reopening a ferry route between Vladivostok and the North Korean port city of Rason, which are only 200 kilometers away kilometres.