In fresh days, information that global passenger educate services and products between China and North Korea are resuming has been spreading impulsively around the go back and forth business.
The cause was once a statement from the reputable WeChat account of China Railway pointing out that, beginning March 12, 2026, global passenger trains will perform in each instructions between Beijing and Dandong in China, and Pyongyang in North Korea.
Xiangyu, a excursion information at a go back and forth company in Dandong, stated that a lot of the net pleasure could also be untimely.
“Presently the entire web is spreading the inside track in regards to the March 12 educate reopening to North Korea,” he stated. “However the carrier is principally for trade vacationers and particular workforce. In different phrases, best trade visas are lately to be had — vacationer visas for abnormal vacationers have no longer been reopened in any respect.”
He added that many excursion operators are already selling “first departure” excursion applications.
“I’ve been operating alongside the border for greater than a yr and feature been observing the placement carefully. There was no reputable understand about reopening tourism to North Korea. Businesses asking other folks to pay now to ‘lock in a place’ or promoting so-called inaugural excursion teams are principally charging other folks an ‘intelligence tax’ —playing with vacationers’ cash on a chance.”
In reality, rumors in regards to the reopening of North Korean tourism don’t seem to be new. In August 2024, international media additionally reported that North Korea would possibly resume tourism. On the time, the Chinese language go back and forth business was once making ready eagerly, however Pyongyang by no means showed the reviews and the dialogue step by step light away.
In line with reputable North Korean statistics, greater than 200,000 international vacationers visited the rustic in 2018, a report top, with about 90% from China.
Now that the China–North Korea global educate carrier has resumed, go back and forth knowledge platform VariFlight displays that on March 11, flight searches to Dandong higher by way of about 50% in comparison with the day prior to this, whilst educate price ticket searches to the town rose more or less 20%.
This means that even after six years of suspended global tourism following the border closure, Chinese language vacationers’ hobby in North Korea has no longer light.
