North Korea anxious to jack up its tourism revenue appears to be aggressively promoting the symbols of inter-Korean summit talks, such as Pyongyang cold noodles, the border peace village of Panmunjom and Mount Paekdu, to potential foreign tourists.
JS Tours, a Japanese booking agent of the North's Korean International Travel Co., has launched North Korean tour packages featuring places jointly visited by the leaders of South and North Korea, American broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported Wednesday.
(Yonhap)
On its website, the Japanese agent advertises a three-night, four-day Pyongyang tour package that includes stops in the well-known Okryugwan and Chongryugwan restaurants, saying the restaurants offer original Pyongyang cold noodles, or "naengmyeon" in Korean.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, their wives and attendants ate naengmyeon at Okryugwan after an inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in September.
JS Tours has also offered a new five-night, six-day tour package bound for Mount Paekdu, saying Moon and Kim had a commemorative photo together at the Chonji crater lake on top of the North Korean mountain, according to RFA.
A North Korean tourism industry official recently told the Chosun Sinbo that Panmunjom, where Moon and Kim held their first summit in April, is the most popular tourist destination in the North.
The official estimated that the number of foreign visitors to Panmunjom is expected to more than double this year, due to tourists' curiosity for the inter-Korean border crossed by Kim.
Tourism is considered one of the rare sources of foreign currency earnings for North Korea, which has been put under international economic sanctions.
For that reason, the Pyongyang regime has recently been diversifying its tour package programs for foreigners to increase its tourism revenue.
The North's Rodong Sinmun daily newspaper this week introduced Cuba's success as a popular tourist destination, noting the country aims to increase the number of foreign visitors from 4.7 million last year to 5 million this year. (Yonhap)
