A holiday to North Korea is ‘like a school trip’ says operator behind new tour

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As North Korea prepares to reopen to Western visitors, the leading tour operator to the isolated state has described a journey there as “like a school trip”.

Simon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, told The Independent daily travel podcast: “Everything is guided, the itinerary is all planned in advance by us with our partners there.

“You don’t really have to do much thinking for yourself. Thinking for yourself is not hugely encouraged in North Korea anyway.”

The Koryo Tours boss was speaking as his firm put the finishing touches to its first departure to Kim Jong Un’s realm for five years.

Accumulated demand from adventurers travellers to the totalitarian backwater means the trip – leaving on Thursday 20 February – has sold out.

North Korea closed to Western tourists in January 2020. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was the first nation anywhere to shut its frontiers due to the Covid pandemic. It will be the last to reopen.

While a group of Russian visitors was allowed in a year ago, largely for publicity purposes, it was only this month that Westerners were invited back to the pariah nation the size of England

“It’s happened really quickly,” Mr Cockerell said. “Just a week-and-a-half ago or so, we were told, ‘Send in some staff for final meetings’.

“We scrambled a bit and sent in one of my colleagues.

“The border opens to tourists in just one area, in the Rason area, from 20 February.

“We already have a group assembled to go in then, and we’ll be running regular trips after that.”

The Rason Special Economic Area, in the far northeast of the nation, is a mountainous region sharing land borders with China and Russia. It also has a seashore.

“There are two cities in the area, called Rason and Sombong. There are fishing villages, farming villages, and so on,” Mr Cockerell said.

“But by North Korean basic standards, it’s actually quite advanced.

“The economy there is much better than most of the surrounding areas of the north, which is the poorer part of the country.

“They benefit from trade, both licit and other, from China mostly, and they have a small border with Russia as well.

“Most North Koreans would consider it a good place to live.

“It’s an interesting and quirky place, but it is definitively North Korea. The rules and regulations remain the same. The same kind of propaganda stuff you see everywhere is still present.”

As there is no airport in the region, tourists will be bussed across the border from the Chinese city of Yanji. The border crossing should be smooth, the DPRK expert said: “Rason is technically visa-free. The procedure for an entry permit is the same as applying for a visa, but quicker. So there’s no actual document.

“You’ll find once everything is processed that when you cross the border your name and your details appear on a list held by the Chinese customs side and the North Korean customs side. At the moment it can be done a bit quicker than normal. But you still can’t ‘just show up’.”

The main problem for British passport holders, he said, is the time and expense involved in arranging a double-entry visa for China.

“You have to enter China, then leave China, then enter China again, and you can’t do this with China’s ‘transit-without-visa’ policy because that requires you to fly in and fly out to China, whereas Rason is only accessible by road.

“For many European nationalities, this is no issue because most of them are now visa-free for China.

“But UK applicants have to ensure that they they’re holding the right Chinese visa in advance.

“Rason is a lovely place to visit. It’s a less lovely place to be marooned because you forgot to get the right Chinese visa.”

A one-hour pre-trip briefing, covering regulations, etiquette and safety, is mandatory for participants with Koryo Tours.

The firm says: “Offences that would be considered trivial in other countries can incur very severe penalties in North Korea, particularly actions the authorities deem to be disrespectful towards the North Korean leadership or government, or those involving religion.”

Koryo Tours is running two trips a month from March onwards. The longest tour, with four nights in North Korea, costs €705 (£587). Highlights include visits to:

The Foreign Office warns against travel to the DPRK. The travel advice says: “The security situation in North Korea can change quickly with no advance warning about possible actions by the authorities. This poses significant risks to British visitors and residents.

“The North Korean authorities have previously detained foreign nationals for allegedly violating local laws and have denied them access to support from their governments.

“Support from FCDO is severely limited, especially while there is no British Embassy presence. Remote support is available if you’re able to contact us online or by phone. However, the routine lack of access to internet and mobile networks makes it almost impossible to communicate outside of North Korea.”

Koryo Tours tells prospective visitors: “We take these sorts of warnings extremely seriously, of course, and make sure that – because of our regular visits to the country, unequalled time spent on the ground, and continual consultations with our partners in Pyongyang, as well as various international government representatives and other interested agencies – we continue to run our DPRK tours safely.”

The firm’s general manager added that, for the first time, some visitors may be able to access the internet – at a hotel in Rason with access to the worldwide web.

He said: “We’re working on a way to maybe take groups to that hotel. But naturally in a very kind of North Korean way, it’s not as simple as just showing up and connecting. Every device has to spend several minutes having a password assigned to it. The minute you connect more than two, the whole thing collapses.

“It’s very North Korean that ‘something exists, but it doesn’t exist’.

“They have it, but they don’t really have it. It’s a situation in flux.

“People should assume that they’re not going to be online when they’re there. And if we can get them a bit of internet access, that’s a bit of a bonus.”

Summing up the prospects offered by the reopening, the Koryo Tours expert said: “You enjoy and endure a trip to North Korea in equal measure, I find.”

Source: independent.co.uk