Adventurous Russians don’t have many travel options after the start of the war in Ukraine.
Therefore, the partnership between Russia and North Korea in the field of tourism was met with enthusiasm. First, because Russian tourists are offered the opportunity to practice their favorite winter sports.
And secondly, because the DPRK is one of the most closed and secretive countries. It already has a hard time welcoming visitors, and after the pandemic, tourism there completely died down.
Therefore, Pyongyang made an effort to welcome the first 100 Russians, but the tourists’ impressions are not the most flattering.
Complaints about the not-so-smooth journey floated across Telegram as soon as the Russian group boarded the plane.
It is part of Air Koryo, North Korea’s only state-owned airline whose fleet consists mostly of old, poorly maintained aircraft made in Russia.
An influencer complains on the chat platform that the plane “smells like mothballs”, and her short clip shows a shabby and morally outdated interior.
“This plane looks to me like something that was kept in the hangar for a very, very long time, and then it was taken out for flight. Everything is falling apart,” the Russian says. She adds that she has never had such a hard time fastening her seat belt on a plane as she did on this flight.
For travel blogger Ilya Voskresensky, the flight from Vladivostok to Pyongyang directly turns out to be a time machine, he tells CNN.
Voskresenski states that people in North Korea are living the way his grandparents lived years ago.
“It was like teleportation in time. There are no advertisements in Pyongyang, only party posters and slogans,” he explains. The only thing the blogger manages to buy as a souvenir are North Korean newspapers, which seem exotic to him.
The view is repeated in the winter resort where the Russian tourists are.
Tourists can only take pictures of certain sights, and in no case should military personnel and people in uniform be seen in their pictures. North Koreans are strictly forbidden to look at tourists or talk to them.
An influencer named Elena Bychkova shared on Telegram that she was not allowed to leave the hotel unaccompanied because she “doesn’t know Korean and could become a nuisance.” During a spectacular concert of 200 children at the Palace of Youth, she feels that there is something terribly wrong with this display.
Again there, another tourist – Yulia Meshkova – tells her followers that she will not visit North Korea again “for ethical reasons”.
She is categorical on her channel that the DPRK is a “totalitarian dictatorship” and the country “does not have any touristic value”.
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