A group of Russian tourists headed to North Korea from Vladivostok airport in Russia's Far East on Friday, likely the first foreign travelers from any country to enter the isolated state since the pandemic. The tour underscores deepening cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang following a meeting last September between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a cosmodrome in Russia's Far East. Many Russians now struggle to travel to Europe and the United States because of sanctions applied to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. In October, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he would recommend North Korea as a vacation destination.
South Korea's government said it has no record of North Korean state media reporting on tourists entering the country since the pandemic. The tour group will visit the capital, Pyongyang, and will then go skiing, Inna Mukhina, the general director of the Vostok Intur agency, which is running the tour, told the AP. There are "lots" of people who wanted to come on the tour to North Korea, Mukhina said, adding that the group contains travelers from places across Russia including Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched in between Poland and Lithuania. The group also includes children who study skiing at a Russian school that aims to create Olympic champions.
The Russians' reasons for visiting North Korea vary, Mukhina said, suggesting some people are interested in the opportunity to visit a closed country, while others are more interested in skiing and snowboarding. The group is not a traditional tourist group, but "a test tour delegation" that could pave the way for other groups of Russian tourists, Mukhina said. The package costs $750 per person, according to the tour agency. The trip was a surprise to Asia observers, who had expected the first post-pandemic tourists to North Korea to come from China, the North's biggest diplomatic ally and economic pipeline. Chinese travelers accounted for about 90% of the foreign visitors to North Korea before the pandemic. (More North Korea stories.)
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