North Korean Economy Watch

The Koryo Tours December newsletter went out this week.  You can read it here. Interesting highlights below:

1. Apparently the areas open for tourism in the DPRK are expanding.

“We opened a few new areas to tourism over the course of the year including the East Coast city of Chongjin and the nearby Chilbo mountain area, Haeju in the south west of the country and various sites around Pyongyang. We stayed in a few different hotels, many of which we are now able to offer to our clients and in 2009 we intend to go to even more places than ever before, some wholly new areas and some new and expanded attractions in more familiar places – we can’t give out all details (some innovate, others imitate – have to keep some of it off the website for now to protect our interest!) but trust us – you’ll never have another holiday quite like this one if you choose to go with us next year. We have vastly expanded our range of tours to be ever-more inclusive to all demands.”

“2008 was also the year in which we continued our innovation in new kinds of tours; we ran a football tour where a foreign side played against a Korean team in a friendly, and the first ever Ice Hockey, Volleyball, and even Cricket (yes, cricket!) tours took place, all of them between visiting westerners and local Koreans. We continued our school trips and cultural exchange programs and assisted in several interesting and worthwhile projects, some of which are outlined further below. We also ran Pyongyang’s first ever pub quiz. It was a very interesting year for us all and we hope to repeat this innovation in 2009 so if you have any ideas for trips to DPRK then we would be more than happy to hear them, there are a great many restrictions on what can be done there but we have many years of experience and a track record of getting things done which is second to none, if it can be done, then we will organise it for you.”

2. Koryo Tours took in about 950 tourists this year.
3. Mass Games are presumed to be on in 2009.
4. Tour dates here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Koryo Tours, Tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.