Koryo Tours, a Beijing-based travel agency, has opened bookings for tours to Rason, a North Korean border city with China, to celebrate former leader Kim Jong Il's birthday. This marks the first opportunity for foreign tourists to visit North Korea since the pandemic.
This picture taken on April 16, 2024 and released from North Korea ’s official Korean Central News Agency via KNS on April 17, 2024 shows celebrations to mark the completion of the second phase of a 10,000-unit housing development in Pyongyang. - AFP PHOTO/KCNA VIA KNS: A tour operator said Monday it had opened bookings for trips to a North Korea n border city to celebrate former leader Kim Jong Il’s birthday, offering foreign tourists the first chance to visit since the pandemic.
The birthdays of members of the ruling Kim dynasty are typically feted in the North with large scale public celebrations. 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”.
Tourism to the North was limited before the pandemic, with tour companies saying around 5,000 Western tourists visited each year. Americans were banned from travelling 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 the coronavirus, and later bolstered defences along its northern boundary with China to deter its own nationals from re-entering the country illegally.
The North has sent arms and ammunition, plus thousands of soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine, Seoul, Washington and Kyiv have said.
Politics NORTH KOREA TOURISM KIM JONG IL RASION CHINA
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