The leading travel company taking tourists to North Korea says it hopes to send in the first Western tourists for almost five years by the end of 2024. The nation was the first to close its borders to tourism at the start of the pandemic in January 2020 – and is the only country still to reopen. Simon Cockerell of Koryo Tours told The Independent ’s daily travel podcast : “A few hours ago, we were informed by our partners [in Pyongyang] in the National Tourism Administration that one specific area is going to open to all nationalities in December.
” That area is Samjiyon, a newly developed tourism complex in the far north of the country, near the Chinese border – and close to Paektu, the tallest mountain in North Korea. “It’s not a full reopening of the country back to what it was, or more than what it was,” said Mr Cockerell. “It’s a specific opening of one, relatively obscure-up-till-now area.
“It’s considered to be the home of various guerilla bases used during the resistance of the Japanese occupation, and the official birthplace of Kim Jong Il as well. So there’s a lot of what the North Koreans call revolutionary history in the area.” He said access to Samjiyon would likely be through a land crossing in the north of China, which has not previously been used by any Western tourists.
North Korea’s current leader, Kim Jong Un – son of Kim Jong Il – imposed the most severe border closure of any nation during Covid. “It was a real, a proper .