Sawt Falasteen - Western tour operators enter North Korea for first time since pandemic

In January, travel agencies said the North would reopen the border city of Rason to foreign tourists, five years after Pyongyang sealed its frontiers in response to Covid-19.

Neither North Korea nor China have commented on the plans.

The Beijing-based Koryo Tours, which offers mainly Western tourists a glimpse into the secretive nation, wrote on its website on Thursday that "staff crossed the border in the early hours of this morning".

"We're happy to finally enter North Korea," the travel agency wrote in a blog.

"The country is not yet fully open to tourism and this is a special trip for staff only."

But they hope to confirm the opening of Rason to tourism in "the coming days".

Another travel agency, Young Pioneer Tours, also uploaded a picture of a passport with a North Korean border stamp, declaring they were "first to be back in five years".

Koryo Tours last week said that they had opened bookings for "the first trip back to North Korea since the borders closed in January 2020".

The company said then that it hoped the tour would take place in February.

Itineraries included visiting "must-see" sites in Rason and a chance to "travel to North Korea to celebrate one of the biggest holidays, Kim Jong Il's Birthday", the agency wrote on its website.

The birthday of former ruler Kim Jong Il -- father of current leader Kim Jong Un -- is marked as Day of the Shining Star on February 16, and typically features large-scale public celebrations, including military parades.

The tours were slated to start in China, with guests to be driven to the border with the nuclear-armed North.

Young Pioneer Tours also began taking advanced bookings for Rason tour packages in January.

Rason became North Korea's first special economic zone in 1991 and has been a testing ground for new economic policies.

It is home to North Korea's first legal marketplace and has a separate visa regime from the rest of the country.

Tourism to the North was limited before the pandemic, with tour companies saying around 5,000 Western tourists visited each year.

Americans were banned from travelling to the North after the imprisonment and subsequent death of student Otto Warmbier in 2017.

K.AbuTaha--SF-PST