Tag: tourism

The last time I was in Itaewon it did not seem any busier than usual, but apparently this year the number of foreigners visiting the district has increased:

Itaewon has seen a sharp rise in visitors this year, a trend driven in part by Yongsan District’s effort to revive the area’s local-brand commercial district.

According to the Yongsan District Office on Friday, the initiative is now entering its final stage and has begun to deliver tangible results. 

The number of domestic visitors climbed from 1.25 million last year to 1.3 million as of November. Foreign tourist arrivals also exceeded 250,000, up from 240,000 a year earlier.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This is actually a pretty good idea to make using public transit easier for foreigners. With that said it is not that hard to figure out how to pay for public transit in Korea:

The government has begun reviewing a system that would allow foreign tourists to use buses and subways in Korea with overseas-issued credit cards, officials said Sunday.

The land and transport recently launched a bid to commission a study on introducing an open-loop public transportation payment system, which was to begin this month and run through the end of next year, according to the officials.

The study aims to enable foreigners to pay public transportation fares directly with international credit cards. Currently, visitors must purchase and top up transportation cards with cash or buy prepaid cards designed specifically for foreigners, which often causes inconvenience.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This will be a quick way for the Japanese government to raise money from tourists:

The government and the ruling coalition are considering a plan to raise the departure tax from the current ¥1,000 per person to ¥3,000 or more to fund measures against overtourism, informed sources said Thursday.

The specific size of the increase will be discussed during fiscal 2026 tax system reform talks at the end of the year.

Japan introduced the departure tax, formally called the international tourist tax, in 2019. It is levied uniformly on all travelers departing from Japan, including Japanese nationals traveling abroad for work or leisure.

Japan Times

You can read more at the link.

I am sure Ms. Stephens feels like she is doing something positive, but in my opinion she is just enabling the Kim regime to receive tourism dollars that ultimately goes to funding their nuclear and missile programs that threatens regional peace:

When British traveler Zoe Stephens, 30, decided to tour North Korea for the first time in 2017, she didn’t think she would be doing it for a living.

“I went to North Korea as a tourist first, pretty much the same way as everyone else. I realized it’s nothing like what the media says,” she told The Korea Herald. She said “the real North Korea” took her by surprise and charmed her.

“So I decided that I wanted to start doing tours to show everyone what the media wasn’t showing — the human side to North Korea.”

Since then she has visited North Korea more than two dozen times, staying as long as a month at a time until the pandemic shut down the borders. She eventually began working as a tour guide for a Beijing-based company Koryo Tours, which mainly offers travel programs to North Korea.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but Ms. Stephens claims she has free access to go around the country and take pictures. However, I doubt they are taking her to the labor camps and firing squads. Keep that in mind every time someone tells you how great North Korea is to visit.

I don’t know why anyone would want to visit North Korea other than for morbid curiosity. Ever dollar spent there is helping to fund the regime:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been briefed on tourist exchanges between Moscow and Pyongyang and preparations for his visit to North Korea are underway, the Kremlin has said.

The Russian news agency TASS on Saturday (local time) quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying, “Preparations for the visit are proceeding at their own pace.”

Putin has not visited North Korea since July 2000.

TASS also reported that Alexander Kozlov, the environment minister for Moscow, who is leading an intergovernmental commission on cooperation with North Korea, touted the growing popularity of tourist exchanges between the two countries during his meeting with Putin earlier Saturday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

With North Korea wanting to reopen international tourism I guess we will see who will be the next western fool to get detained in 2024:

If there is anything different this year, it would be a policy emphasis on fostering its tourism industry, according to experts, Monday.

“North Korea had already focused on promoting its tourism industry before the coronavirus pandemic forced it to stop it all,” Kang Chae-yeon, a North Korean refugee-turned-scholar at the National Institute for Unification Education, told The Korea Times. “Next year, efforts to attract foreign visitors will be back on track.”

In a sign of gearing up for such efforts, North Korea adopted a new law in August to “vitalize and expand” its tourism industry, according to its state media.

Under the young leader, North Korea stepped up efforts to develop tourist sites, promoting “world-class” vacation properties across the country, including Samjiyon, a city situated near Mount Paektu, and Wonsan, a port city situated on the East Sea.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Because nothing bad has ever happened to tourists who visited North Korea, and it's absolutely guaranteed that nothing bad will ever happen to those who visit in the future. https://t.co/cKBrbnTAnU

— John Lee (The Korean Foreigner) (@koreanforeigner) July 18, 2018

Kim Jong Un's envoy asked President Trump to support tourism development — including casinos — in the coastal North Korean city of Wonsan and the nearby ski resort of Masik Pass, according to South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo (link in Korean) https://t.co/uNunxvCKNH pic.twitter.com/WF0rKEdVZj

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) June 4, 2018

This photo provided by North Korea’s main daily Rodong Sinmun on June, 5, 2018, shows a mass civilian-military rally taking place in Wonsan, an eastern coastal city of the North, to show their commitment to completing a tourism district by April 15 next year, the birth anniversary of late founder Kim Il-sung.  (Yonhap)