Chinese tourists flood North Korea as Beijing remains Pyongyang’s key ally
- UN sanctions on the North do not cover tourism, allowing Beijing to use it as a bargaining chip
- Tourists are visiting from China in record numbers, paying about US$360 for a three-day trip
On a grey stone column in Pyongyang, a mural shows Chinese and North Korean soldiers rushing into battle against US-led forces in the Korean war. Decades later, the monument is a regular stop for new waves of Chinese going to the North, this time as tourists.
An inscription on it lauds “the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, who fought with us on this land and smashed down the common enemy”.
Their “immortal exploits” will “last forever”, it proclaims, as will “the friendship forged in blood between the peoples of the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”.
Nearly 70 years after Mao Zedong sent millions of soldiers to save Kim Il-sung’s troops from defeat as General Douglas MacArthur’s men marched up the peninsula, China remains the isolated, nuclear-armed North’s key diplomatic backer and main provider of trade and aid.