Context: Following Aleksandr Lukashenko’s visit to North Korea from March 25 to 26, Belarusian state media and government officials sought to portray it as nearly unprecedented. For example, political scientist Andrei Lazutkin appeared on Belarusian Radio’s First National Channel and argued that the DPRK had only received two foreign leaders — Vladimir Putin and Aleksandr Lukashenko — in the past 30 years. Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov emphasized Kim Jong-un’s exceptional reception on CTV. The Weekly Top Fake team proved both claims to be fake.
Three days after Aleksandr Lukashenko’s visit to the DPRK ended, state media continued to discuss it. On March 29, 2026, the Glavnyi efir show hosts on the First Information Channel (News.by, owned by Belteleradiocompany) discussed North Korea’s potential as a tourist destination.
“Here’s a curious fact. The DPRK openly accepts tourists from different countries. For many people, traveling to Pyongyang is seen as rather extreme,” said Palina Shuba at the beginning of the Vremya pervogo feature.
“But the truth is that the DPRK is a great place to visit year-round,” continued her co-host Maksim Uhlianitsa.
This is far from reality. North Korea does not openly accept tourists from multiple countries. Currently, only tourists from Russia are permitted to visit the DPRK. Their interest in the country is clearly growing: while just over a thousand people visited in 2024, the figure rose to roughly five times that number the following year.
North Korea has been closed to tourists from all other countries since the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The situation was different before that: thousands of tourists, mostly from China, came to the DPRK. According to various estimates, the number of tourists ranged from 150,000 to 300,000 per year. Western tourists numbered about 5,000. Six years after the pandemic, this influx has yet to recover. North Korea permitted tourists to visit the Rason border region a year ago, but reversed the decision two weeks later for unknown reasons.
North Korea cannot be described as a country that is open to free tourism. Individual trips are not permitted. Tourists can only enter the country as part of a group. All group activities are carried out according to a pre-agreed program and are accompanied by a guide. They are unable to walk around the city on their own or enter local stores for regular shopping. A week-long tour like this costs about $2,000.