In January, travel agencies said the North would reopen the border city of Rason to foreign tourists, five years after Pyongyang sealed its frontiers in response to COVID-19.
Representatives from two Western travel agencies crossed into North Korea Thursday for the first time since the isolated regime closed its borders five years ago at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, raising hopes for new tourism offerings to a remote border city.
Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours, both based in Beijing, announced that they had crossed the Chinese border into the North Korean special economic zone of Rason to discuss logistics for upcoming tours.
"After waiting over 5 years since the closure of the North Korean borders to tourism due to the COVID-19 pandemic back in January 2020, we're happy to finally enter North Korea," Koryo Tours wrote in a blog post on its website.
"The country is not yet fully open to tourism and this is a special trip for staff only," the post said. "We will use our time in Rason to discuss with our partners as well as check out any new tourism sites and find out any key North Korea tourism updates."
Young Pioneer Tours also announced its arrival in Rason, posting photos of the border crossing and an image of a passport stamp on its Facebook page.
"This visit marks a great milestone, as we are the first non-Russian foreigners to set foot in the country since its borders were sealed five years ago due to the pandemic," the post said.
Both travel agencies had previously announced in January that North Korea was reopening Rason to tourism and began offering tentative itineraries for group tours. However, trips scheduled to begin this month were postponed, with the companies now taking bookings for March.
Rason, located in the northeast of the country near the borders of China and Russia, has rarely been visited by Western tourists. The area became the North's first special economic zone in 1991 and has been a testbed for various market-based activities in the otherwise strictly state-controlled economy -- it is home to North Korea's first mobile phone network, first legal marketplace and first card payment system, according to Koryo.
Koryo's planned five-day itinerary includes visits to factories, foreign-language and Taekwondo schools, seaside recreation areas and a bank where visitors will be able to open a North Korean bank account. Young Pioneer's offering is similar.
Roughly 5,000 Western tourists visited North Korea annually before the COVID-19 border closure, according to media reports.
United States citizens have been barred by the State Department from traveling to North Korea since 2017 following the imprisonment and death of college student Otto Warmbier.
Warmbier was detained in North Korea in 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster. He was released from prison in a vegetative state and died six days after returning home. A federal judge later found North Korea to be responsible for his torture and death.
Neither North Korea nor China have commented on the plans.
The Beijing-based Koryo Tours, which offers mainly Western tourists a glimpse into the secretive nation, wrote on its website on Thursday that “staff crossed the border in the early hours of this morning.”
“We’re happy to finally enter North Korea,” the travel agency wrote in a blog.
“The country is not yet fully open to tourism and this is a special trip for staff only.”
But they hope to confirm the opening of Rason to tourism in “the coming days.”
Another travel agency, Young Pioneer Tours, also uploaded a picture of a passport with a North Korean border stamp, declaring they were “first to be back in five years.”
Koryo Tours last week said that they had opened bookings for “the first trip back to North Korea since the borders closed in January 2020.”
The company said then that it hoped the tour would take place in February.
Itineraries included visiting “must-see” sites in Rason and a chance to “travel to North Korea to celebrate one of the biggest holidays, Kim Jong Il’s Birthday,” the agency wrote on its website.
The birthday of former ruler Kim Jong Il — father of current leader Kim Jong Un — is marked as Day of the Shining Star on February 16, and typically features large-scale public celebrations, including military parades.
The tours were slated to start in China, with guests to be driven to the border with the nuclear-armed North.
Young Pioneer Tours also began taking advanced bookings for Rason tour packages in January.
Rason became North Korea’s first special economic zone in 1991 and has been a testing ground for new economic policies.
It is home to North Korea’s first legal marketplace and has a separate visa regime from the rest of the country.
Tourism to the North was limited before the pandemic, with tour companies saying around 5,000 Western tourists visited each year.
Americans were banned from traveling to the North after the imprisonment and subsequent death of student Otto Warmbier in 2017.
