North Korea has abruptly stopped international trips to a northeastern border city near China, less than three weeks after it opened it up for tourists since the pandemic.
Multiple Western travel agencies that organise tours to Rason, a city that lies near North Korea’s border with China, had posted updates last month detailing tours they had organised for foreign tourists after they received permission from their North Korean partners.
However on Wednesday, they announced on their social media that tours to Rason were currently suspended.
“Oh no! Just received news from our Korean partners that Rason is closed to everyone. We will keep you posted,” Spain-based travel agency KTG Travels posted on their Facebook.
Rayco Vega, tours coordinator for KTG, confirmed the suspension to news agency AFP and added: “We do not know the reason nor how long this will last.”
Beijing-based agency Young Pioneer Tours posted a similar announcement: “We have been advised by our partners in the DPRK that tours to Rason are currently paused. We are in the process of clarifying how this will impact your upcoming trips. We recommend that those planning tours in April and May refrain from booking flights until we have more information.”
Travel agency Koryo Tours, which organised a five-day tour of Rason for foreign tourists just last month, announced: “There has been news that the Rason border may be temporarily closing for tourism. We are currently working to confirm and understand the situation with our partners and will announce any further updates as soon as possible.”
The tourists that visited Rason via Koryo Tours were the first international travellers to enter the reclusive country in five years, besides Russian tourists.
“Since January of 2020, the country has been closed to all international tourists, and we are glad to have finally found an opening in the Rason area, in the far north of North Korea,” Koryo Tours general manager Simon Cockerell said at the time.
Last week, German travel influencer Luca Pferdmenges, 23, who was on the tour, was interviewed by Business Insider about his trip to Rason. The influencer detailed his trip, adding: “But what surprised me most was that they didn't hide the country's visible poverty.”
“People in the rural areas were clearly very poor, and we weren't allowed to photograph them. Many of them were using oxen and carriages. Our guides also very strictly told us not to photograph the farmers' houses in the countryside because they are very run-down and shabby,” he said.
“Surprisingly, they didn't close the curtains so we couldn't see it. The guides also didn't deny that there is poverty; they just don't like people taking photos of it and presenting it as the sole truth.”
North Korea closed down its borders in early 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
Rason, established in 1991 as a special economic zone to attract foreign investment, was never as popular a destination as the capital Pyongyang, which remains closed to all but Russian tourists.
International flights to and from North Korea resumed only in 2023, with a small group of Russian tourists flying in for a private tour in February. The group consisted of people from the tourism industry and “travellers from literally all parts of Russia from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok”, the Russian embassy in Pyongyang said at the time.
Before the pandemic, Chinese visitors accounted for about 90 per cent of all foreign arrivals, with 350,000 entering in 2019 alone, reported The Straits Times.
South Koreans remain barred from entry and the US has prohibited its citizens from travelling to North Korea since 2017 following the detention and subsequent death of American student Otto Warmbier.
