It’s been a pretty rough week for civil strife around the world, with North Korea rattling its sabre and talking about trading sanctions for war. NK tends to shoot its mouth off quite often without really ever making a move, and its reported tests of a nuclear bomb have yet to be confirmed, but this is a country with an oddball leader in charge of the world’s fifth largest military. But, it’s also a very poor country (they tend to spend on money on food before guns), so odds are that if you can get in the country, they wont turn away your tourist dollars.
Here’s the official line from the state department for Americans attempting to make the trip to North Korea. If you’ve got the cash to make things a little easier for yourself, check out Koryo Tours. Wikitravel also offers a wealth of information.
Also the headlines reveal escalating trouble in the Phillipines, where we hear it is safe to travel in many parts of the country, but new bombings recently prompted the British Foreign Office to strengthen its Philippines travel warning.
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I’ll buy you a beer if you are able to get travel to North Korea and back.
Our Governor here in New Mexico seems to be able to get in, maybe I’ll hitch a ride with him.
Bob:
http://www.adventurekorea.com/board/board.asp?id=notice&rowno=187
This has past but I think more are in the works. I had a friend go on the first one. I’ll take a Red Stripe.
North Korea only issues an extrememly limited amount of visas for US citizens (usually around 10 per year). There was a ‘lottery’ recently through their embassy in Beijing. This was limited to 5 visas, which got you the opportunity to buy an expensive state-run tour of Pyongyang. Don’t even think about it if you have any military background. Did I mention the US citizens had to be living in the Beijing area to qualify?
Another option I heard about in South Korea was taking a boat tour through parts of NK where you don’t actually get off the boat, therefore you don’t need a visa. There is something similar in Helsinki to see St. Petersburg without the hassles of a Russian visa…
For many non-US citizens, the travel agents listed above can probably help get you into NK.
Lonely Planet Korea has a section on NK, which may be of interest also.
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