Skift Take

If you have North Korea on your travel bucket list, expect the planning to be complicated and your visit to be like a school field trip.

Dawit Habtemariam

An upcoming Russian tourist trip to North Korea is the first such inbound visit by vacationers there in four years. When people think of that country under the strict dictatorship of Kim Jong Un, they don’t think of tourism. So many will have questions about what kind of travel is possible.

North Korea is known as one of the last communist state holdouts of the 21st century. As a little-visited curiosity, it's appealing to some Westerners.

Here's what you need to know:

Does the upcoming Russia trip mean North Korea is open for tourism?

No. North Korea closed its border because of the pandemic in January 2020. The upcoming trip was allowed an exception thanks to an agreement between the Russian regional government of Primorsky Krai and the North Korean government.

“With any luck, it's a kind of little experiment for the North Koreans to see that they're still ready to receive foreign tourists,” said Simon Cockerell, a general manager for Koryo T