Simon Cockrell

That area, Rasan, as you said, it's a free trade zone and it's very remote, but it will be the first part of North Korea to reopen to foreign tourists since they closed about five years ago.

So the offer, as it were, is the resumption of tourism, organized tourism, which is the only kind there, to take people in to see what it's like, see as much as they can, hopefully resuming next week, but still exact details to be confirmed.

Well, nobody goes there for a rest. The appeal is mostly for people who are intrigued by an intriguing country, really.

you get a picture of life that you can experience there, which of course is limited by your time and your access and infrastructure, but also by the nature of the North Korean system, which is to keep their own people and influence from outside, including human influence, separate.

So what you see and experience is perfectly real and normal life, but it's not the totality of reality and normal life. And nobody should really

expect it to be either but also the lifestyles of people in rasan are quite distinct from those of people in the capital pyongyang or in other parts of the country there's quite a bit of a range there but of course you don't really see and experience the worst of the worst but intelligent people go there and they can infer what things are really like or they can just have a trip and leave more confused than when they arrive which is that's a common experience too

I have been there 182 times.

Yeah, but people always ask, so it's just counting in increments of one. It's not too hard.

Well, it's not permitted under the law there. So in terms of the practicalities of it, you could, of course, just walk out of a door. Most people can manage that. And really, the law in Rawson technically provides for that. But the reality is that if you go very far, you could end up causing some trouble for the people who host you there. who are a local travel company. It's not the government.

It's not some kind of nefarious organization of security or military personnel. And that's not a particularly good thing to do. You wouldn't want to cause trouble for anybody in North Korea. So unfortunately, you are constrained by the law, which is rather paternalistic. over its own people, but also over tourists. And they treat everything like a school trip, really.

Everything has to be organised in advance. But this is all understood in advance as well. Nobody has ever shown up there and thought, you know, I thought I could do what I wanted.

Unfortunately, you are constrained by the law, which is rather paternalistic over its own people, but also over tourists. And they treat everything like a school trip.