From Iceland — Icelandic Tourist Office Offers Trips To North Korea

Icelandic Tourist Office Offers Trips To North Korea

Published December 26, 2013

An Icelandic tourist office is selling up to 25 spots in a group trip to Pyongyang this spring.
Trans Atlantic is selling the trips to the totalitarian regime, where guests will stay in the North Korean capital from April 10 to 23, 2014.
Vísir reports that historian Árni Hermannsson is the organiser of the trip, having visited North Korea himself in 2010. There, he told reporters, he had a good rapport with a small Chinese tourist office, who invited him to return to North Korea with a group.
Non-discounted fares for the trip start at about 610,000 ISK, and include the hotel room, breakfast, and sight-seeing tours, amongst other things. The organisers caution that the price of the trip does not include flowers for the memorial to Kim Il Sung (16 euros per group), the elevator up Junche Tower (5 euros per person) or service fees for North Korean guides.
North Korea is very restrictive about tourists, allowing only 1,500 per year to visit. They have featured most recently in the news for North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un having his uncle, Jang Song-Thaek, executed, and then ordering the country’s military to assume a state of “combat readiness”.

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