Millions of tourists visit Asia each year for its pristine beaches and cultural treasures, but Nick Bonner offers travelers something different — the “socialist paradise” of North Korea.
Bonner launched Koryo Tours in Beijing in 1993 along with a few colleagues, taking an initial group of 12 curious tourists keen for a glimpse inside one of the world’s most isolated countries.
That grew last year to 1,300 hardy travelers, who take in such unconventional tourist sites as a former sanatorium, a seafood processing plant and a “model collective farm,” said Bonner, a former landscape architect.
“Most people we take in are not the sort of people who would normally travel on group tours. For us, it is important the person has the best experience possible,” Bonner said in an interview at his offices in Beijing.
It was just that for British chemical engineer Dennis Murphy, who was impressed by being treated “almost as an official visitor” on a trip he called “magic ... an entry into a totally different world.”
North Korea has only been open to Western tourists since 1987 and it remains tightly controlled. Koryo clients are accompanied by North Korean minders at all times and independent wandering is forbidden.
Foreign journalists are not allowed on the tours and tourists from the US are still banned from exiting North Korea by train to China — the North’s main link with the outside world.
Initially, Koryo Tours could only bring its clients to Pyongyang, the Demilitarised Zone on the border with South Korea and Mount Myohyang, said Bonner, who opened the first live music club in Beijing in the early 1990s.
“Slowly, we have been getting more and more access,” the Briton said of his tours, which bring in roughly half of the foreign tourists to North Korea in partnership with the state-run Korea International Travel Company. “It has been amazing, based on trust.”
North Korea is desperately poor after decades of isolation and bungled economic policies. Huge numbers of its estimated 24 million people suffer inadequate nutrition, aid agencies say.
That is a side of the country tourists do not see, but the door is slowly opening.
With the help of 40 local multilingual tour guides, Koryo’s offerings have expanded to include the “tranquil beaches” of North Korea’s coasts, and even home stays in the town of Haeju and the industrial city of Chongjin.
Tours also go to the South Korean-funded joint industrial estate in Kaesong, the port city of Nampo, and Mount Paekdu — a sacred site for North Koreans near the birthplace of leader Kim Jong-il previously closed to Americans.
In September, Bonner will achieve a first — taking foreign tourists on a bicycle trek near Mount Paekdu.
“That has never been done before — it’s a challenge,” Bonner said.
In Pyongyang, women are not allowed to cycle as it is viewed as “inelegant ... and dangerous,” Bonner said.
Also on the tourist trail is the country’s second-largest city Hamhung, open to foreigners only since last year, and Rason, a rarely seen “free-trade” area.
One trip is centered around March 21, the day personal income tax was abolished in the Stalinist country, while another offers the chance to “relax in a former sanatorium on the east coast,” but the real prize is a visit to the Arirang Mass Games — the world’s largest choreographed display of synchronized acrobatics, dance and flip-card displays, involving up to 100,000 people.
“The most spectacular event on Earth ... a performance ... which is only possible in North Korea,” a Koryo brochure says of the next festival in August.
Trips to North Korea are not cheap. A four-night stay can run to about US$1,400 a person.
The cost helps Bonner to fund another venture — making documentary films in the country, which in the past have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival in the US.
Australian teacher Lachlan Olive visited North Korea in October, expecting “drab, heavily polluted” scenes, but was surprised by the number of parks and greenery in Pyongyang. However, he wondered whether, on a visit to a modern collective farm supposedly visited repeatedly by North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, he was seeing the real North Korea.
“We also visited an orphanage that had a similar feeling of being ‘sexed up’ for our benefit,” he said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the