On Thursday, North Korea — the most-oppressive and isolated country in the world — let Western tourists visit for the first time in five years.
Chinese travelers are expected to be allowed to visit the country starting next week, while a few Russian travelers have visited since early last year.
North Korea was one of the first countries to seal off its borders to outsiders in January of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, every year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese tourists crossed into North Korea, and around 5,000 Western tourists went in, according to Koryo Tours.
Today, Westerners are only allowed in Rason, a region near the borders with China and Russia. The capital, Pyongyang, remains off-limits to Western visitors.
The rules for visitors to North Korea are just as restrictive as before the pandemic. Tourists aren’t allowed to roam freely and must be accompanied by North Korean guides, while only approved sites can be visited.
Simon Cockerell, from the UK, is the general manager of the Beijing-based Koryo Tours, which is one of two tour companies operating in the country.
Koryo is selling five-day Rason tours for about $700. Rason has more commerce than most parts of the country, and tours may include a school uniform factory and a sea cucumber farm, according to Cockerell.
“It’s a place with about 15 small hotels. It’s got a casino, which was a big draw for Chinese tourists, and before the shutdown there were various factories there owned by foreign companies, including some Americans that used to own some factories there before the ban on Americans going to North Korea was brought in.”
In 2017, the US government made it illegal for US citizens to visit North Korea on tours.
Koryo Tours led 13 Westerners into Rason on Thursday.
Cockerell said that the North Korean tour companies that Koryo Tours works with are state owned, like every North Korean company. But, he added, they do give tour company workers in the country a chance for a better life.
“They get money from it, they do well from it, and they support a kind of large pyramid of extended family and friends through that money. These are fairly decent jobs in North Korea.”
Tourists are taken to see statues of the Kim leaders, plus events like mass dances, which can involve thousands of dancers pirouetting in public squares. The North Korean tour guides are also tasked with keeping tourists away from the brutal realities of the country.
Cockerell said that even though tourists can’t move or speak freely in North Korea, their presence is still a chance to subtly challenge the regime’s propaganda. Since the Korean war in the 1950s, posters, books, TV and films in the country have portrayed Westerners as villains, sometimes as “wolves” intent on destroying North Korea.
“We see the benefit for the North Korean side as being increased interaction with foreigners,” Cockerell said.
He added that tourism was a way for locals, many of whom would risk being shot or imprisoned if they tried to escape North Korea, “to get a little taste of what foreigners are like, to experience interactions and stories and songs and anecdotes and gossip with foreigners as much as possible.”
On tours to North Korea before the 2020 shutdown, tourists queued to bow to the preserved corpses of Kim Jong-il and his father Kim Il-sung who started the dictatorship dynasty.
Cockerell said, “I understand that some North Koreans may see some foreigners visiting, and may interpret that as, ‘Oh, these foreigners from abroad, they’ve come here because they recognize the glory of our leaders.’”
He added, “I think that showing them the variety of different foreigners that are out there is a kind of benefit to them, to see a little bit of plurality of the outside world and start to realize that the outside world is far more complicated than their state media suggests.”
Lina Yoon, senior Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch, agreed that tourist engagement can be positive for the select North Koreans allowed to meet them. But she said that visiting North Korea isn’t like going to other totalitarian countries.
“Indirectly, eventually some of the [tourism] money goes to the government in places like China,” she said. “But in North Korea, the money that you pay to the tour agency will directly go to the North Korean government.”
She added, “It’s difficult to have a hard position on the issue, but you’re funding the government, which engages in human rights abuses that are really terrible. The UN has found that the North Korean government commits crimes against humanity.”
Yoon said that anyone thinking about visiting should think about how the tourism infrastructure may have been built.
“Almost every North Korean is exposed to forced labor at some point in their lives,” she said, adding that they are “subjected to techniques to increase fear, to ensure obedience.”
They use torture, public executions, forced disappearances and arbitrary arrests.
“Every single person that [tourists] will be meeting will be living in fear of what they will be saying to these tourists.”