Tourism or propaganda: how ethical is your North Korean holiday?
Kim Jong-un wants two million foreign visitors a year by 2020, but debate rages over whether travellers are a force for good – or merely propping up the regime
Asking a person who risked their life to escape from North Korea why foreigners would pay to go there on holiday has a touch of the surreal.
Ji Min-kang, who fled the country after his grandfather, a government minister, was imprisoned and his family placed under surveillance, struggles to understand it.
“Outsiders can’t communicate with the citizens and the guides control all that they see,” says Ji. “You cannot see the real North Korea as a tourist.”
Yet despite tight restrictions and widespread human rights abuses, the number of people visiting North Korea is increasing.
In 2005 – around the time Ji defected with his sister and mother – the number of Western tourists was in the hundreds. Now 5,000 visit every year, say Koryo Tours, the biggest operator taking tourists to the isolated dictatorship. That number is still dwarfed by Chinese tourists, estimated to be 100,000 annually.
