North Korea reopens to tourists after 5 years

And though the country’s capital, Pyongyang, remains closed to tourists, “there are a lot of people who have been waiting to go to North Korea,” Greg Vaczi at Koryo Tours, told NBC News on Tuesday.

He added that 20 tourists will be able to enter in time for the birthday celebrations.

North Korea is “desperate for foreign currency,” said Hazel Smith, a professor at London’s SOAS University, who lived in North Korea for two years. “Not just for oil, but basic technology like irrigation or health services.”

Before the pandemic, the country hosted hundreds of thousands of Chinese tourists who provided up to $175 million in extra revenue in 2019, according to the South Korea-based news outlet NK News.

However, the United States banned citizens from traveling to the country after the death of American student Otto Warmbier in 2017.

The 22-year-old stole a propaganda banner from a hotel during a visit to Pyonyang in January 2016 and was later sentenced to 15 years hard labor for committing a hostile act against the government. The University of Virginia student was returned to the U.S. in a coma the following year and died shortly afterwards.

The latest tour promises to take tourists to the “must-see sites in Rason,” which is known as North Korea’s special economic zone.

The city has operated differently from the rest of the country since 1991 and has been used as a testing ground for new economic policies, the country’s first mobile phone network and the first card payment system.

Among other attractions, Koryo Tours said, tourists can visit the “Sea Cucumber Breeding Farm and Paekhaksan Combined Foodstuff Processing Factory.” They will also be offered the chance to open their own North Korean bank account during a stop at the Golden Triangle Bank.