Having emerged from World War II as one of the most repressive regimes in the world, North Korea hardly comes to mind as an appealing tourist destination. U.S. citizens have been barred from using American passports to enter the country since 2017 while many other countries around the world also advise their citizens to avoid all travel there amid lack of an embassy and difficulties around providing assistance in the event of arbitrary detention.
Prior to the enactment of the travel ban, 22-year-old University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier was arrested at Pyongyang airport following a group tour in 2016 and imprisoned for 17 months before being brought back to the U.S. and dying of a brain injury that was likely caused during detention.
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While it has always severely limited entry and exit from the country, North Korea has kept its borders completely shut for all foreigners since the emergence of the covid pandemic in 2020.
'Imagine a company with no customers and no income for three and a half years'
Signs that this is getting ready to change have started to emerge as North Korean national carrier Air Koryo started running some flights between Pyongyang and Beijing in China and Vladivostok in Russia.
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General manager of Beijing-based Koryo Tours, Simon Cockerell organized structured group tours to the country for foreigners prior to the pandemic. As he told to CNN, they see the restarting of the flights as a sign that North Korea may be looking to restart its limited tourism industry but have not received any formal communication from the country's government.
"There's no Ministry of Tourism," Cockerell said. "So there's no high-level government officers or anything like that involved in tourism. Imagine a company with no access to its market with no customers and no income for three and a half years. That's how difficult it's been."
Korean news agencies also reported that North Korea's Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly intends to meet to discuss the issue of travel among other issues on Sept. 26. At the end of August, the country's government also passed a new law aimed at "revitalizing domestic tourism and expanding international tourism simultaneously."
Tours may resume but you still can't go to North Korea
As the regime run by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un severely limits access to foreign media and rarely provides information from inside the country, actual details around when and if this will happen remain very scarce even if experts have been saying that the country is toying with the idea due to economic need for tourists.
Any trips run by Koryo Tours or any other agency will also continue to be off-limits to American citizens — on Aug. 22, the Biden administration extended the ban on entering North Korea enacted during the Trump era for another year.
"The Department of State has determined there continues to be serious risk to U.S. citizens and nationals of arrest and long-term detention constituting imminent danger to their physical safety," the notice signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken reads.
