Russian tourists reportedly going on a ski trip to North Korea will be the first international travelers to visit the country since its borders closed in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report, published on Wednesday by Russia’s state-run Tass news agency, underscores deepening cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.
It also follows a meeting in September last year between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a cosmodrome in Russia’s far east.
Photo: AP
Tass did not specify a timeframe, but the report brought some surprise to Asia observers who had expected the first post-pandemic tourists to North Korea to come from China, the North’s biggest diplomatic ally and economic pipeline.
An unspecified number of tourists from Russia’s far eastern region of Primorye would first fly to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where they will visit monuments such as the Tower of Juche Idea, named after the North’s guiding philosophy of “juche” or self-reliance, Tass reported.
The tourists will then travel on to the North’s Masik Pass on the east coast, where the country’s most modern ski resort is, Tass said.
It said the trip was arranged under an agreement reached between Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of the Primorye region, and North Korean authorities.
Kozhemyako last month traveled to Pyongyang for talks on boosting economic ties as part of a flurry of bilateral exchanges since the Kim-Putin summit.
Ahead of the trip, he told Russian media that he expected to discuss tourism, agriculture and trade cooperation.
The Kim-Putin summit deepened outside belief that North Korea is supplying conventional arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine, in return for high-tech Russian weapons technologies.
North Korea has been slowly easing pandemic-era curbs, and opening its international borders as part of its efforts to revive its economy devastated by the lockdown and US-led sanctions.
“For North Korea, tourism is the easiest way to earn foreign currency under the international sanctions regime,” said Koh Yu-hwan, former president of the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification.
Koh said he expects Pyongyang to eventually also open North Korea to Chinese tourists.
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