Pyongyang

On the north-eastern edge of the city, Kim Il Sung's former official residence became his mausoleum after his death in 1994; Kim Jong Il's embalmed body has lain in a separate hall since 2012. It is the most solemn place on any itinerary. Visitors walk long marble corridors, ride travelators past portraits, pass through machines that blow dust off clothing and then file round each glass sarcophagus, bowing at the foot and at each side but not at the head. Halls display the leaders' medals, cars, railway carriages and even a yacht.

TipVisits are only on set days and are not guaranteed. Smart dress is expected (no jeans, shorts or T-shirts), photography is forbidden inside, and phones and bags are left at a cloakroom.

Completed in 1982 for Kim Il Sung's seventieth birthday, this granite arch was designed to be a few metres taller than its Parisian model, at 60 metres. It marks the spot where he is said to have addressed the city on his return in 1945, and its carvings commemorate the guerrilla struggle against Japanese colonial rule from 1925 to 1945. It stands at the foot of Moran Hill, a park of pavilions and pine trees where Pyongyang families picnic on holidays, close to the Kim Il Sung Stadium.

Two bronze statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, each around 20 metres tall, stand on Mansu Hill in front of the Korean Revolution Museum, flanked by sculpted groups of soldiers, workers and farmers. For visitors this is a place with strict rules, not a sightseeing stop. Groups are normally expected to stand in line, bow together and lay flowers, which are sold on site. The North Korean authorities, and the FCDO, stress that disrespect toward images of the leaders is taken very seriously.

TipPhotographs must show both statues whole: never crop them, photograph only part of a figure or copy their poses. Dress neatly, keep hands out of pockets and follow your guide's instructions exactly.

The Korean War (1950 to 1953) is presented here entirely from the North Korean official perspective, as a war of aggression by the United States that the North won. The huge museum, rebuilt and reopened in 2013 for the sixtieth anniversary of the armistice, holds captured tanks and aircraft, a revolving 360-degree panorama of the Battle of Taejon and, moored outside, the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence ship seized off the east coast in 1968. Uniformed guides lead groups through, and the narrative is intense.

The 105-storey pyramid that dominates every view of the city has never opened. Construction began in 1987, stalled in the early 1990s when money ran out after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and left a bare concrete shell for more than a decade. Glass cladding went on around 2011, and since 2018 its facade has been used as a giant LED screen for light shows and slogans at night. Tours pass it rather than enter, and it is best seen from the Juche Tower or the riverbank.

Opened in 1973, the metro has two lines, Chollima and Hyoksin, and is among the deepest systems in the world, at around 100 metres underground, deep enough to double as a shelter. Its stations are underground palaces of marble columns, chandeliers and huge mosaics of revolutionary scenes, with names such as Puhung (Rebirth) and Yonggwang (Glory). For years foreigners were allowed only a short hop between those two stations; tours since the late 2010s have usually ridden further. Newer locally built trains now run alongside older carriages bought second-hand from Berlin decades ago.

TipThe escalators take several minutes. Photography of stations and murals is normally allowed, but ask your guide before photographing passengers.

The city's central square, finished in 1954 on the west bank of the Taedong, is the stage for the military parades and mass rallies shown on state television, with painted markers on the paving to guide formations. It is overlooked by the Grand People's Study House, a national library in traditional Korean style with tiled roofs, and lined by government buildings hung with portraits. On quiet days it is surprisingly empty, with commuters crossing and students rehearsing for the next event.

Directly across the river from the square rises the 170-metre tower named after Juche, the state's official ideology of self-reliance. Built for Kim Il Sung's seventieth birthday in 1982, it is faced with granite blocks, one for each day of his life to that point, and topped by a red metal flame lit at night. A lift runs to the viewing platform beneath the flame, giving the best panorama of the city, the river bridges and the Ryugyong Hotel. In the entrance hall, plaques from foreign Juche study groups are set into the walls.

About 150 kilometres north of Pyongyang, Myohyangsan is a range of forested granite peaks, waterfalls and hiking trails, long revered as one of Korea's great mountains. The main attraction for tours is the International Friendship Exhibition, a vast complex built into the mountainside that displays tens of thousands of gifts presented to the country's leaders by foreign governments, companies and admirers, from railway carriages to ornate vases. Visitors wear overshoes and see only a fraction of the halls. Nearby is Pohyon Temple, a Buddhist monastery founded in the eleventh century, whose surviving halls and stone pagodas are among the few places on an itinerary that predate the modern state.

TipBags and cameras are normally left at the entrance of the exhibition, and bowing to a waxwork or statue of the leaders is expected at the end of the visit.

Kaesong, about 160 kilometres south of Pyongyang along a mostly empty motorway, was the capital of the Koryo dynasty from 918 to 1392, the kingdom that gave Korea its name. Because the city sat just north of the front line, it escaped the worst of the wartime bombing, and its old quarter of tile-roofed houses is the best surviving traditional townscape in the North. In 2013 UNESCO inscribed Historic Monuments and Sites in Kaesong as a World Heritage Site, covering the Manwoldae palace site, the Sonjuk Bridge, the Songgyungwan Confucian academy (now the Koryo Museum), the Namdaemun gate and royal tombs including that of King Kongmin. Kaesong is also known for ginseng and for pansanggi, a lunch served in a set of small brass bowls. The motorway's Arch of Reunification, long a landmark on the way, was demolished in early 2024 after the North abandoned its policy of reunification with the South.

A few kilometres from Kaesong, the Demilitarized Zone splits the peninsula. From the north side, tours have visited the hall where the Korean War armistice was signed on 27 July 1953, preserved with its original tables and flags, and the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, where blue negotiation huts straddle the line and soldiers of both sides once stood a few metres apart. Many visitors see this same spot from the South on tours from Seoul. Since both Koreas withdrew from their 2018 military agreement and the North declared the South a hostile state in 2024, the border has been heavily refortified, and whether visits from either side run on a given day depends on the security situation.

On the east coast, the Kalma peninsula outside the port of Wonsan has been rebuilt as a huge beach resort of hotels, water parks and a long sandy shore, designed for about 20,000 guests. It was formally opened on 24 June 2025 and received its first visitors on 1 July 2025, mainly North Koreans, with small Russian tour groups following. On 18 July 2025 the operators announced that it would temporarily stop accepting foreign tourists; Russian agencies later advertised trips again, but as of late 2026 the resort has seen very few foreigners and no general reopening to Western visitors has been confirmed.

At the far north-eastern tip of the country, where North Korea borders both China and Russia along the Tumen River, Rason is a special economic zone with its own looser entry rules, a port at Rajin, markets and a coastline of bays and islands. It became the first place Western tourists were let back in after the pandemic: a small group entered on 20 February 2025, but tours were halted again in early March 2025, less than three weeks later. Since then only limited Russian groups, reaching it overland via Vladivostok and the Tumangang crossing, have been reported, and its reopening to other visitors remains unconfirmed.