North Korea tour operators hopeful ahead of country’s reopening

AFP | Beijing

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

A Beijing-based North Korea tour operator expressed hopes of fresh business yesterday following an unexpected announcement that the country would reopen to foreign tourists this winter. A day earlier, Koryo Tours said they had received notice from isolated North Korea that tourism to the northeastern city of Samjiyon will resume in December after nearly five years of Covid-triggered closure.

“Our initial reaction is positive of course. It’s been a long wait,” Simon Cockerell, general manager of Beijing-based Koryo Tours, said yesterday. “Demand has been strong throughout the closure so I would expect a decent rebound (in business),” he said, adding “there are a lot of folks who have been anxious and keen” to visit nuclear-armed North Korea since the pandemic.

KTG Tours, also based in China, said on its Facebook page Wednesday that it had been told “tourists will be able to go to Samjiyon (Mt. Paektu area) this winter.” “Exact dates to be confirmed. So far just Samjiyon has been officially confirmed but we think that Pyongyang and other places will open too!” it added. Samjiyon, near North Korea’s mountainous northern border with China, is a gateway city to Mount Paektu, where official narratives say the late supreme leader Kim Jong Il was born.

His son and successor, Kim Jong Un, has poured huge resources into developing the area, with the vast project including new apartments, hotels and a ski resort. Cockerell said that opening up to tourists in the bitterly cold remote area in December was unexpected but “a positive step for sure”. “Doing it in the far north in the middle of winter is idiosyncratic, but the DPRK is nothing if not an idiosyncratic place,” he said, using the official acronym for North Korea.