Why is North Korea courting Russian tourists?

Hoping to replenish state coffers with much-needed foreign exchange reserves and offset the sharp post-Covid decline in Chinese tour groups, the Hermit Kingdom has set its sights on inquisitive holidaymakers from an ideologically aligned Russia.

- SAAHIL MENON

On July27, Russian budget carrier Nordwind Airlines launched the first nonstop civilian flight from Moscow to Pyongyang in 77 years with more than 400 passengers allegedly on board. The inaugural monthly air route between both nations’ capitals came on the heels of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un personally unveiling anewly developed, state-of-the-art beach resort in the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Area at the end of June — only to prohibit overseas arrivals a week thereafter.

Curiously enough, this blanket entry ban applied to all outsiders except Russians — 15 of whom spent a week in Pyongyang and Wonsan doing the bidding of a pro-Kremlin police state. As a reciprocal gesture of goodwill for the roughly 14,000 North Korean troops dispatched just under a year ago to fend off Ukraine's Kursk offensive on top of Pyongyang supplying up to 40% of Moscow's total ammunition for the “special military operation” since August 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov encouraged leisure seekers from Russia to visit the luxury seaside complex during his trip there in mid-July.

For the deeply insecure and paranoid Kim dynasty, however, tourism promotion remains something of a double-edged sword. While bespoke tour packages peddled by state-owned travel agencies help the North Korean regime, there is a real danger of importing ideas and virtues that run counter to the militant self-sufficiency — known as Juche — which the reclusive East Asian country swears by. Westerners, in this regard, are looked upon as particularly inconvenient guests, not least because the noisy, rough-and-tumble democracies they hail from happen to be an anathema to the hereditary handover of power and the fabled “Paektu bloodline” that characterises North Korea.