North Korea suspends foreign tours to border city just weeks after reopening

North Korea has suspended foreign tourism to the border city of Rason, weeks after allowing a group of international travellers to enter the nation for the first time in five years, according to tour companies.

This week, two Western tour operators — Koryo Tours and Young Pioneer Tours (YPT) — and China-based KTG Tours announced the suspension of trips to the hermit state.

"Just received news from our Korean partners that Rason is closed to everyone. We will keep you posted," KTG Tours, which specialises in North Korean travel, said on Facebook.

People planning North Korea tours in April and May should refrain from booking flights "until we have more information", YPT said in a Facebook post.

Last month, 13 travellers from the UK, Canada, Greece, New Zealand, France, Germany, Austria, Australia and Italy visited the northeastern city of Rason — where the country’s special economic zone is located — for a five-day trip organised by Koryo Tours.

The travel company's manager, Simon Cockerell, said the visitors crossed into North Korea by land from China. Whilst inside the country, they visited factories, shops, schools and statues of the country's first two supreme leaders, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

They were the first non-Russian visitors to enter North Korea since it shut its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2022, the nation has been slowly scaling back restrictions and reopening its borders, with some 880 Russian tourists visiting the country throughout last year, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

Stricter restrictions

Before the pandemic, tourism was an easy, legitimate source of foreign currency for North Korea, one of the world’s most sanctioned countries due to its nuclear programme.

At least 300,000 Chinese tourists visited North Korea annually pre-pandemic— representing more than 90% of total international visitors — according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea's intelligence agency.

Yet experts have said the restrictions that North Korea has typically imposed on foreign travellers, such as requirements that they move with local guides and the banning of photography at sensitive places, will likely hurt its efforts to develop tourism.

Koryo Tours told the BBC that the group's movements in Rason were more restricted than on previous trips — they had fewer chances to wander the streets and talk to locals.

The tour company said earlier this week that it was accepting international applications for the Pyongyang Marathon for the first time since the pandemic. However, whether those applications will be processed for the 6 April event is now unclear.

North Korea is expected to open a massive tourism site on its east coast in June. In January, when US President Donald Trump boasted about his relationship with Kim Jong-un, he said: "I think he has tremendous condo capabilities. He’s got a lot of shoreline".

Lee Sangkeun, an expert at the Institute for National Security Strategy, said that Rason, the eastern coast site and the capital Pyongyang would be the places where North Korea's authorities believe they can easily monitor and control foreign tourists.