Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Wednesday the 14th of August. The last country to reopen after COVID now looks as though it will be welcoming back visitors from this winter. It was actually the very

first country that closed its borders back in 2020 and that country is North Korea. Not exactly

in the tourism mainstream but even so a place that many people yearn to go to,

because of course it sounds deeply fascinating, this closed nation.

Anyway, I'm lucky enough to be talking to Simon Cockerell, who's not actually in Pyongyang,

the capital right now. He's in Canada's largest city, Toronto,

but he's very kindly got up early to talk to me about this.

Simon, welcome to the podcast.

So tell me what's happening.

Thanks, Simon.

Thanks for having me on.

What's happening is basically that there's been some progress

in the gradual and slow reopening

of North Korea to tourism.

So a few hours ago, we were informed by our partners there in the National Tourism Administration

that one specific area is going to open to all nationalities in December.

So the details are few.

But that area is not a well-known area.

It's a place called Sam Diyong, which is in the far north of the country,

near the Chinese border, and around the area of the tallest mountain in Korea, Mount Pectin.

So it's not a full reopening of the country back to what it was or more than what it was.

It's a specific opening of one relatively obscure up till now area.

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