North Korea announced that it will reopen a city to foreign tourists next December, after almost five years of border closure due to the pandemic, China-based tour operators reported.
At least two Chinese travel agencies have announced that tourists will soon be allowed visit the mountain town of Samjiyonin the north of the country.
North Korea isolated itself (further) from the world at the beginning of the pandemic, in early 2020, and only began to ease restrictions in the middle of last year.
Border closures have also blocked imports of essential goods, causing food shortages exacerbated by international sanctions due to the country’s nuclear program.
Samjiyon, Kim Jong-un’s “socialist utopia”
The new city of Samjiyon, which can be visited again this year, was inaugurated in 2019 by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after the culmination of monumentles works at the edge of the country, near Mount Paektu, legendary cradle of the Korean Nation. Samjiyon was classified by the country’s Government as the culmination of the “socialist utopia”.
Kim Jong-un himself led the inauguration ceremony after the reconstruction of Samjiyon, which required the investment of colossal sums in the titanic reconstruction project of a city that was once the capital of a county bordering China and in which, according to north korean propaganda, nation Kim Jong-Il, father and predecessor of Kim Jong-un.
Samjiyon, cataloged by the Government as the culmination of the “socialist utopia.” Photo EFE/EPA/KCNASamjiyon then began to have 380 new building blocksincluding apartments, hotels, commercial, cultural and medical facilities, which can house 4,000 families, in what represents one of the largest initiatives by Kim Jong-un to promote a “self-sufficient economye”.
In the city, defined as “epitome of modern civilization“, according to state media, there is also a museum about the revolution, a winter sports stadium and a ski resort nearby. The project includes a new railway line to Hyesan, 10,000 homes and a blueberry processing factory and potatoes, the two most important resources in the area.
After decades immersed in a tight insulation from the rest of the world, North Korea seemed to begin to change the situation in 2016when tourism registered an increase of 30% Compared to the previous year, in 2017 growth was close to 40%, according to data from the management of the Travel Korea travel agency.
Statues of former North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang. Photo Kim Won Jin / AFP.Tourism promotion began to be intense: for the first time: in that year the North Korean embassy in Spain organized an event to encourage visits from Westerners; In turn, the then secretary general of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Jordanian Taleb Rifai, encouraged Europeans to travel to the Asian country: “The more Europeans go to North Korea, the better North Koreans will know the outside world.” ”he said then.
With the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020, the country shielded its borderss, which will only allow visitors to pass through again, as announced, from the end of this year.