TAIPEI -- When British traveler Zoe Stephens decided to tour North Korea for the first time in 2017, she didn’t think she would be doing it for a living. “I went to North Korea as a tourist first, pretty much the same way as everyone else. I realized it’s nothing like what the media says,” she told The Korea Herald.
She said “the real North Korea” took her by surprise and charmed her. “So I decided that I wanted to start doing tours to show everyone what the media wasn’t showing -- the human side to North Korea.” Since then she has visited North Korea more than two dozen times, staying as long as a month at a time until the pandemic shut down the borders.
She eventually began working as a tour guide for a Beijing-based company Koryo Tours, which mainly offers travel programs to North Korea. “North Korea tour guide was my first real job after university. It’s fun.
I absolutely love it,” she said. “I’m also a professional blogger and digital marketer.” After the pandemic hit, she created a YouTube channel based on her previous North Korea travels under the username Zoe Discovers.
Her most watched video features her exploring the North Korean side of the demilitarized zone -- regarded as one of the most heavily guarded borders in the world -- and casually conversing with a North Korean guard. “I interviewed the soldier after asking casually. It wasn’t anything formal.
I asked my North Korean guide if he (the soldier) would be okay with it, and s.