This picture taken on August 24, 2024 and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on August 26 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (front C) inspecting a performance test of drones organized by the Drone Institute of the Academy of Defense Sciences at an undisclosed location in North Korea. KCNA via KNS/AFP/File

BEIJING, China — Tour operators said Thursday that North Korea had reopened a border city to foreign tourists, five years after Pyongyang sealed its frontiers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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North Korea shut its borders in early 2020 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and later bolstered defenses along its northern boundary with China to deter its own nationals from re-entering the country illegally.

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Pyongyang has since reopened the border to some trade and official delegations, and North Korea last year permitted Russian tourists to enter the country for the first time since the pandemic.

On Thursday, two tour operators with links in China and another based in Spain said they had been notified that foreign travelers were now able to visit the northeastern North Korean city of Rason.

The special economic zone (SEZ) bordering China and Russia was open "effective from today", travel agency Young Pioneer Tours wrote on its website.

"According to our partners and contacts, the plan is to open immediately for both Chinese and all other foreign guests," the company said.

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

Most travelers enter the country by plane or train from China.

The rest of the country remains closed to travelers, Beijing-based Koryo Tours said in a statement.

And despite Rason's reopening, "we do not (yet) have confirmed itineraries and prices for tourists", the firm said.

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It added that it was not clear what kinds of tours Pyongyang would permit and how many people they would allow to enter.

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

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

The vast majority of foreign visitors to North Korea before the pandemic were Chinese, though some Americans also ventured there before Washington banned travel following the imprisonment and subsequent death of student Otto Warmbier in 2017.

People from South Korea, with which Pyongyang remains technically at war, are also barred from visiting without official permission.

China is a key ally and source of economic backing for North Korea's diplomatically isolated, UN-sanctioned government.

Reports in August suggested Pyongyang was preparing to restart tourism in the northeastern city of Samjiyon.

That reopening has so far failed to materialize.

© Agence France-Presse

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