A tour operator yesterday said it had opened bookings for trips to a North Korean border city to celebrate former leader Kim Jong’il’s birthday, offering foreign tourists the first chance to visit since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tour operators said last month that the North would reopen Rason, a city on the border with China, to foreign tourists, five years after Pyongyang sealed its frontiers in response to COVID-19.
Neither North Korea nor China has commented on the plans.
Photo: AP
Koryo Tours said the tour this month in Rason would be “the first trip back to North Korea since the borders closed in January 2020.”
“This tour will take you to the must-see sites in Rason, North Korea’s Special Economic Zone. Plus, you will travel to North Korea to celebrate one of the biggest holidays, Kim Jong-il’s Birthday,” the Beijing-based travel agency wrote on its Web site.
The birthdays of members of the ruling Kim dynasty are typically feted in the North with large-scale public celebrations.
The birthday of former ruler Kim Jong-il is marked as Day of the Shining Star on Feb. 16, and typically features large-scale public celebrations, including military parades.
Itineraries on offer also included visiting North Korean factories, schools and a bank at which tourists can open their very own North Korean bank account.
However, although the tour is open for bookings, it is “not yet confirmed,” Koryo said, adding it was “awaiting information from the Chinese authorities on the opening of the Chinese side of the border.”
The tours are to start in China, with guests to be driven to the border with the nuclear-armed North. Another travel agency, Young Pioneer Tours, last month also announced Rason tour packages.
Rason became North Korea’s first special economic zone in 1991 and has been a testing ground for new economic policies.
It is home to the socialist country’s first legal marketplace and has a separate visa regime from the rest of North Korea.
Tourism to the North was limited before the pandemic, with tour companies saying about 5,000 Western tourists visited each year. Americans were banned from traveling to the North after the imprisonment and subsequent death of student Otto Warmbier in 2017.
North Korea shut its borders in early 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and later bolstered defenses along its northern boundary with China to deter its own nationals from re-entering the country illegally.
Pyongyang has since reopened the border to some trade and official delegations, and North Korea last year permitted Russian tourists to enter the country for the first time since the pandemic.
Chinese tourists — who made up the bulk of foreign visitors to North Korea before the pandemic — have not returned to the country, with experts speculating that it might be linked to Beijing’s growing displeasure over Pyongyang bolstering ties with Moscow.
The North has sent arms and ammunition, plus thousands of soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine, Seoul, Washington and Kyiv have said.
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