When it comes to rating the world's top tourist destinations, North Korea hardly comes to mind by anyone other than the most daring traveler.
Since the end of World War II, the northern part of the Korean Peninsula has been in the control of the Kim dynasty and has some of the most authoritarian laws in the world. Stories like that of Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old Ohio student who tried to take a poster on a group tour of Pyongyang and ended up dying after months spent in a vegetative state following his arrest, caused an international outcry at the time of his prolonged detention in 2016 and 2017.
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While citizens of countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom were previously able to visit North Korea through a small number of guided tours from either South Korea or China, the country closed up to international visitors entirely when the covid pandemic started sweeping the globe in 2020.
Chinese tour companies have started advertising North Korea tours (here is who can go)
As first reported by CNN, certain travel companies that used to operate such tours out of China have begun posting their restart on social media.
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"So far just Samjiyon has been officially confirmed but we think that Pyongyang and other places will open too!!!" Shenyang-based KTG Tours posted on Facebook (META) on Aug. 14.
'Very excited for the opening of North Korean tourism once again'
"We have received confirmation from our local partner that tourism to Samjiyon and potentially the rest of the country will officially resume in December 2024," Beijing-based Koryo Tours wrote on its website. "Having waited for over four years to make this announcement, Koryo Tours is very excited for the opening of North Korean tourism once again."
Similar announcements were made in the fall of 2023 but tours are yet to formally restart. And even if they do, they will be reserved for citizens of countries other than the United States since American citizens have not been allowed to use a U.S. passport to enter North Korea since the Otto Warmbier situation escalated in 2017.
The ban was recently extended for another year by Secretary of State Antony Blinken due to what the administration considers "to be serious risk to U.S. citizens and nationals of arrest and long-term detention constituting imminent danger to their physical safety."
Another closed-off country that has had the same leader since the office was established in 1994 after the fall of the Soviet Union, Belarus recently also announced that it was opening visa-free travel access to 35 countries from Europe's Schengen Zone. The primary reasons for the sudden shift from a very closed-off policy comes both from the need to bring in tourist dollars and political considerations given the country's reputation for its collaboration with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.
"President Alexander Lukashenko is trying to return to his policies of balancing between the West and Russia because he doesn't want to hold the 2025 election in a 'besieged fortress' and wants the West to recognize its result," political analyst Valery Karbalevich told the Associated Press in July 2024.
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