North Korea to reopen to Western tourists years after COVID

Nearly five years after North Korea sealed its borders to the outside world due to the coronavirus pandemic, its officials indicated that it will once again open up to Western tourists.

Travel companies that previously took small groups of visitors into the North received word from their partner organizations in Pyongyang in the middle of August that the first tours could resume in December. The northern city of Samjiyon is likely to be the initial destination.

"We were informed in a phone call from our partners in Pyongyang," said Simon Cockerell, general manager of specialist North Korea travel agency Koryo Tours. "It was unexpected but welcome, and we asked for further information, but no more than what we have announced was available."

Other specialist travel firms, including KTG Tours, received a similar notification.

Koryo Tours, which is based in Beijing, took the first foreign tourists into North Korea in 1993. Over the following decades, it has given around 30,000 curious outsiders a glimpse into the lives of people living under a strict communist dictatorship.

Pyongyang slams borders shut during COVID-19

The last Western tour group visited in January 2020, shortly before  Pyongyang decided to close the country's borders in an effort to isolate itself from the global pandemic.

Many other countries limited travel to stop the spread of infection; they eventually lifted restrictions as fears of coronavirus faded. Now, travel agencies say there is huge interest in North Korea, which is the last country in the world to reopen after the pandemic.

"We have inquiries from many countries, and it is clear there is a lot of pent-up demand from folks wishing to see the place for themselves," Cockerell told DW.

The main reason that people give for wanting to travel to North Korea is "because it is there," he added, although there are many "country collectors" and "completists" looking to visit every nation on Earth.

"It is obviously not the easiest place to visit and, of course, there are a great many restrictions, rules and regulations there, so it is not somewhere that people go to for no reason or just casually," Cockerell said. "Those who do go there really want to. They want to see what they can, do what they can and learn as much as possible."

"That leads to highly engaged groups of visitors and a fascinating experience," he added. 

South Koreans also want to visit

Kim Seong-kyung, a professor of North Korean society and culture at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said she is very keen to travel north of the border, but that it was impossible to do so at present.

"If the rules were relaxed, I would very much want to go out of academic interest, but also out of interest in this divided country with two very different societies," she told DW.

"Like most South Koreans, I would love to know more about the North."

And while the government in Pyongyang has always been very cautious with outsiders, Kim believes the authorities have been preparing for a resumption in tourism for some time.

"North Korea needs more resources from outside its borders, and tourism is one of the few sectors that is exempt from United Nations sanctions," she said.

"The Kim regime is making a big effort to attract more international tourists because it needs foreign currency, but I also believe he wants the country to be considered 'normal' and to show off to the rest of the world its natural attractions as well as the beautiful buildings in the cities."

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un signed asweeping trade and security agreement with President Vladimir Putin when the Russian leader visited Pyongyang in June, and there have already been groups of Russian visitors to the North.

In the past, Chinese tourists made up the majority of visitors, but that source of income for the North also dried up when the borders were closed.

Kim's tourism officials have been busy over the last few years, and work on the Wonsan-Kalma tourist area, on the northeast coast, is close to completion.

Kim Jong Un keeps an eye on tourism

Kim visited the site on July 18 to monitor the progress, with satellite images showing that hotels, restaurants, amusement parks, a rotating observation tower and other tourist facilities are close to completion along the 4-kilometer (2.5 miles) stretch of curving beach.

It is likely that the self-contained resort is designed to appeal primarily to Chinese and Russian tourists.

And while tourism to North Korea is not subject to sanctions at present, there has been criticism from some quarters that visiting the country plays into the North's propaganda hands and helps to finance the regime's nuclear and missile programs.

Koryo Tours chief Cockerell disagrees.

"The cure for the isolation that North Korea is rightly criticized for is not yet more isolation," said Cockerell.

"It is the policy of the North Korean state to keep its people in a situation where they learn about the world only through their own system, which does not present foreigners in the best light, to say the least," he added.

"Interaction, engagement and simply being in the country and moving around all act against this and helps to incrementally open eyes and minds about the complex realities of the world."

Edited by: Darko Janjevic