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Visit Beautiful North Korea: Travel Companies That Capitalize On The Desire For Dangerous Travel

This article is more than 6 years old.

Greg Harrison

Thrill-seeking travelers looking to get far— very far —off the beaten path are fueling a mini-industry focusing on what might be called “danger travel.” Destinations attracting those looking for more than a beach vacation or a look at the Louvre include the violence-plagued Democratic Republic of Congo, ISIS-targeted Iraqi Kurdistan, and the no-friend-of-the-United States Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. The small companies offering such trips have attracted attention in the weeks following University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier’s death. Despite the continuing interest in visiting these trouble spots, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is at work on a bipartisan bill that would close off tourism to North Korea for Americans. The bill, which could be introduced this summer, was in the works before Warmbier’s June 19 death, and some Republicans have argued for including it in  Russia-Iran sanctions legislation.

Young Pioneer Tours, the Xi’an, China-based company Warmbier used for his visit to North Korea, said it would no longer take Americans on such trips, although it is continuing to offer North Korea journeys to travelers from other countries. The company's Rowan Beard says YPT accepts all nationalities except South Koreans and Americansclients come from around the world, with a majority from Europe, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Other companies continue to fill the seemingly unceasing demand for such tours. “We’re reviewing policy on Americans traveling to North Korea, but currently all of our tours are operating as scheduled. We’ve got trips going every week,” says Andrea Lee, CEO of Uri Tours in Kearny, NJ. Uri offers tours to North Korea and another Lee-run company, Before Travel, runs trips to unusual destinations such as Bhutan and Tibet. Before is targeted to millennial travelers, who make up 60 to 65% of the company’s customer base and, Lee says, are more interested in collecting experiences than homes or cars. The annual revenue of both companies combined is between $1-2 million, according to Lee.

Lupine Travel, based in Wigan, U.K., also has not changed its North Korea policy since Warmbier’s well-publicized death. Lupine specializes in trips to what tour director James Finnerty calls “hard-to-reach destinations.”  Finnerty, who heads up the agency’s North Korea department, says that interest in North Korea has been increasing in recent years — so much so that he is in the process of developing two new North Korea tours, one a beach trip and the other a hiking journey.

Most of Lupine’s clients are middle-aged, well-traveled individuals interested in visiting politically interesting places.  “The funny thing is you find the older people are more adventurous than the younger ones,” Finnerty says.

Lupine sends its own employees along on group tours, but leaves the actual work of guiding private tours to North Korean counterparts. “Our current stance [for Americans] is we’re happy to take groups to North Korea where there’s a group leader, but not on a private tour,” Finnerty says. The company runs 50 group tours per year to destinations including North Korea, Eritrea, Chad, Sudan, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan and Lebanon; approximately 1,500 people traveled with Lupine in 2016. Founder Dylan Harris says that 2016 revenues was $775,000 and he expects to double growth in 2017.

Lupine and other companies who run similar tours are capitalizing on the fact that travel has become more affordable, with greater numbers of people seeking exotic destinations.  But some observers familiar with the dangers of obscure destinations believe Americans shouldn’t be traveling to North Koreaor any off-the-beaten-path locales—at all. Fourteen countries on Lupine’s  list of offerings are the subject of travel warnings from the U.S. Department of State, whose website says that travelers “consider very carefully whether you should go to a country at all,” when it  is home to an unstable government, civil war, intense violence or frequent terrorist attacks.

Dylan Harris, Lupine's founder, on a trip to Pakistan

Dylan Harris

“Look at the diplomatic crisis from Otto Warmbier’s capture and the fact there are several other Americans held there,” says Elizabeth Becker, former New York Times reporter and author of Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism. She says of travelers who disregard warnings and go to difficult destinations: “You’re not being honest with yourself when you do that, because you can cause problems way beyond what you can imagine.”

The tour companies claim they take precautions to address such concerns. For travel to North Korea, both Lupine and Uri do some digging on their clients. Lupine checks clients’ professions to determine eligibility. Uri asks for two personal references to verify biographical information. (These extra checks are in place only for North Korea trips.) Both companies said they will reject unsuitable travelers, although in reality they rarely do.

So how do these companies ensure safety while simultaneously scratching their customers’ itch for the unusual? Finnerty says Lupine researches the security situations of potential new destinations, notes recent instances of violence, reads embassy reports, speaks with local correspondents or reads Live Universal Awareness Maps. Liveuamap is a news site reporting conflicts, protests and human rights issues on maps.

Once a new remote destination is added, Lupine finds medical facilities in the country. The company doesn't usually create evacuation plans for its trips, although it did so for a recent trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. “It was more just to kind of alleviate what was evidently a concern for people joining the trip. We reassured them that we were going to a completely safe place,” Finnerty says.

However, some might look askance at this assertion of complete safety, given that the Democratic Republic of Congo has a travel warning from the State Department advising visitors to have “evacuation plans that do not rely solely on U.S. government assistance.”

Dylan Harris of Lupine recently traveled to Damascus to research the situation in Syria. He expects his company to begin offering trips there in about 18 months, after he visits a few more times.   Harris says Lupine hires security for what he calls “higher-risk destinations,” such as Iraq, Pakistan and Somaliland. Notes his colleague James Finnerty: “We’re not in the business of taking people to dangerous places.”

Elizabeth Becker disagrees. “People have gotten the idea that you can go anywhere, anytime. Travel and tourism has taken off and people have become a little bit naive,” she says. She calls some of Lupine’s destinations risky. “You think tourism is choosing which hotel to stay at and which ski slope to go to, when in fact it’s a lot more complicated and it’s real life, and there is a lot more danger out there.”

Many travelers are willing to put aside such concerns. “I don’t like fighting tourists with their cameras and selfie sticks and iPads. You don’t get an authentic experience with hundreds of people crammed into a site,” says Greg Harrison, 48, a Lupine client who has visited Iraq, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Djibouti and Chernobyl with the company.

Greg Harrison on a Lupine tour of Iraq in 2015.

Greg Harrison

Sonriza Ford, 46, of Wilmington, Delaware, quit her 17-year stint as a corporate scientist at DuPont a few years ago to travel the world after her mother died. She has traveled with Lupine to Pakistan and Lebanon and recently completed a nine-month trek through Africa with a company called Oasis Overland in a refurbished military truck that travels around the coast of Africa. Passengers take the bus for certain legs of the journey and jump off the truck, often alone, to visit sites.

“In traveling to these harder-to-reach areas,” Ford says, “there’s an element of risk.” When traveling solo, Ford tries to finish sightseeing by the time the sun goes down and makes sure to carry pepper spray and a whistle. “The concern for safety going to these places doesn’t go away.”

Sonriza Ford

Although some might question the advisability of traveling to places where pepper spray is a routine part of the packing list, others think such decisions should be up to the individual. Erika Richter of the American Society of Travel Agents says:  “We believe in the fundamental principle of travel freedom and that our government shouldn’t be in the business of telling Americans where to travel or not to travel.”

But Elizabeth Becker notes that visitors can unintentionally cause problems for others. “I see tourists in conflict zones and I wonder if they realize that they are putting other people in jeopardy."