October 06, 2003
China's hot new holiday destination
Li, an affluent young Chinese businessman, could be spending his vacations at a beach resort in Bali or Thailand. Instead he devotes his holidays to the country that truly fascinates him: North Korea.
When he sees the streets without traffic and the drab grey clothing of the people, he feels a wave of nostalgia for the old days of Maoism. "It's like seeing a newsreel of our childhood," he says. "The scenes are so similar to China in the 1970s."
Mr. Zhai, a 36-year-old advertising executive, has already been on two visits to North Korea in the past year and is planning a third. He is one of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Chinese tourists who travel every year to the secretive totalitarian state on China's northeastern border, creating one of the world's weirdest tourism booms.
For many Chinese tourists, a visit to North Korea is a bizarre form of time travel. When a young Chinese woman was asked why she planned to visit Pyongyang, she replied: "Because I want to see what China was like in the 1970s."
It's kind of like the reason so many people want to visit Cuba - right down to the luxury hotels from which ordinary citizens are banned. But the North Koreans have taken it a step farther - not only are regular people forbidden from entering tourist hotels, they're not allowed to work there:
A tycoon from Macau has opened a casino and nightclub in Pyongyang's luxurious Yanggakdo Hotel, catering almost entirely to Chinese tourists. North Koreans are strictly prohibited from working in the casino or even visiting it. As a result, the casino has hired more than 100 young Chinese workers for wages of about $240 (U.S.) a month -- but they are forbidden to leave the hotel except on brief escorted shopping excursions.
Posted by damian at October 6, 2003 06:30 AM