Why should you choose Koryo Tours?
Choosing to travel to unusual destinations such as North Korea is a big decision, and choosing the right people to take you is an incredibly important part of that. Learn about how we facilitate tourism responsibly in some of the most interesting and unique destinations on our planet, and at the same time ensure you get the most out of your once-in-a-lifetime experience.
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Koryo Tours — the experts in travel to rather unusual destinations.
Our mission: to facilitate responsible tourism to the world’s most isolated and least understood countries while encouraging people-to-people engagement through travel, culture, sport and humanitarian projects.
Koryo’s co-founder was a tutor in Landscape Architecture at a Leeds Metropolitan University in the early 1990s and he travelled to Beijing for a study tour and to meet his friend Josh Green. Josh arranged the first Koryo trip (through a North Korean colleague he had studied Chinese with in Beijing) in 1993 and Nick was hooked and together they developed company. Josh left the company in 1997 but still leads the occasional tour and provides reflective insight and advice.
Films
Comrade Kim Goes Flying (2012)
Crossing the Line (2006)
A State of Mind (2004)
The Game of Their Lives (2002)
Books
'Made in North Korea: Graphics From Everyday Life in the DPRK' (Phaidon, 2017)
Simon is from the south west of England. He moved to Beijing in 2000, becoming Koryo’s General Manager two years after. Having traveled to North Korea more than 175 times — check out Simon's Instagram to see which trip he is on at the moment — he has probably been to the country more than any other westerner. He is a respected speaker on the country and appears regularly in international media . Simon’s tireless work, alongside our partners in Pyongyang, has been essential in opening up new territories within the DPRK to tourists. Apart from the DPRK he designs and leads tours in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the Russian Far East.
Featured Blog Posts
My First Trip to North Korea
My First Mass Games - 2002
License plates of North Korea
Rebecca is a native Beijinger who has worked and studied in Singapore. Alongside fluently speaking two languages, she also has two degrees (one each from China and Singapore). At Koryo she is responsible for dealing with agents – other companies that use our expert services to help them deliver tours of the DPRK. Rebecca has successfully planned trips with close to 100 agents. She regularly travels to the DPRK to ensure she is providing the best information possible for our partners.
Please contact us if you are an agent and would like to work with Koryo to offer North Korea trips to your own customers.
Elinor was born in Beijing, and completed her undergraduate at the city’s Wuzi University, where she studied English and business administration. Before joining Koryo in 2016 she worked for an international trading company. Elinor now uses her well-developed administrative skills as Koryo’s business assistant. Perhaps most importantly, her keen eye for detail, not to mention her mastery of difficult documents, means she is a perfect match for the key role of managing the thousands of DPRK (North Korea) visa applications we process each year for our tours.
Greg grew up in post-socialist Hungary and has lived in the Netherlands, Israel, and China. He holds a degree in Sociology and Anthropology and worked as a Maintenance Assistant in a US summer camp, on the banana plantations of an Israeli kibbutz, taught Social Statistics in Budapest, and English in rural China. He first traveled to North Koreas as a tourist in 2016 following in the footsteps of his grandparents, who visited in 1988. This trip of a lifetime that made him to dust off his Tour Guide Certificate, and join the Koryo team in 2017. He has been working since managing Koryo's North Korea group tours, developing itineraries, and leading tours.
Greg studied Korean for a month in Pyongyang at the Tourism College in October 2018, and is currently on sabbatical studying Korean at Seoul National University Language Education Institute.
Read more about Greg's journey to become a North Korean Tour Leader here.
Featured Blog Posts
Ostalgie: Looking Back on a 1988 Hungarian Family Vacation to the DPRK
Originally from Melbourne in Australia, Marcus joined the Koryo Tours team in 2016. Coming from a corporate work background managing call centres and customer service teams, Marcus made the move to East Asia after an eye opening trip to China and North Korea in 2015. Within Koryo he leads the organisation of the annual Pyongyang Marathon which is biggest annual event on the North Korean travel calendar. He has also become the office expert on North Korean beer which led to him developing the first ever Brewery Industry Tour of North Korea in co-operation with our local partners.
Featured Blog Posts
North Korean Beer – Ponghak
Peter is a freelance tour leader who has spent the last decade living and working in Asia. He has a special interest in the history of socialist states, which he has explored through journeys to remote parts of the DPRK, China, Russia, Vietnam and Laos. In his spare time, Peter enjoys reading, cycle touring and Sichuanese food.
Featured Blog Posts:
The Abandoned Train Station of Kirovsk
Zoe has been an avid traveller since her teens and hasn’t stayed in one place for much longer than a year since then. Due to her love of meeting new people and exploring new cultures, she has the habit of constantly trying to learn new languages. At university, she studied German, Japanese, and Dutch, and picked up Chinese after moving to China. She has since started her next challenge; Korean. Originally from the UK, she has lived in Austria, Zimbabwe, and Japan before coming to Beijing. She first went to the DPRK for travel 4 years ago, and knew straight away that it wasn’t going to be her last time!
Follow Zoe on Instagram @zoediscovers or on YouTube where she vlogs about North Korea.
Find out more about Zoe
Ian first travelled to North Korea in 2008, crossing the DMZ from South Korea. He has been visiting the country ever since, initially as a tourist with Koryo (of course), and later as a tour guide. He is a keen runner and never misses the Pyongyang Marathon each April. Ian travels to North Korea several times a year as a Koryo Tour guide and also in his capacity as programme manager for Choson Exchange, a charity which teaches business skills to North Korean entrepreneurs. Ian is based in London.
Everyone who travels to the DPRK with us gets an extensive pre-tour briefing at our Beijing office from one of our country experts.
Koryo Tours was established in 1993 by Joshua Green and Nick Bonner as a travel company to promote cultural exchange to DPRK (North Korea). Joshua had worked in Pyongyang for over a year setting up TNT courier company and through his contacts arranged the first tour. Nick was trained in Landscape Architecture and used his skills in design to develop the Studio and engagement side of the company. Simon Cockerell studied philosophy at University and his passion for travel led him to Koryo. He joined the company in 2002 to specialise in travel and sport exchanges whilst Nick continues to mainly work in art and film.
We can provide you with unparalleled access to the DPRK thanks to more than two decades spent developing long-running and deep-seated relationships with our local partners in the country. Travel with Koryo Tours and our access will allow you to go farther and see more than you ever imagined.
We’ve been running tours to the DPRK since 1993 — our staff have made hundreds of trips, and looked after tens of thousands of tourists over the years. We believe it’s important that if you travel to a country as complicated as the DPRK, you do so with people that have proven experience leading safe and successful tours.
Koryo Tours facilitated the earliest Western tourism to the DPRK and created the industry as we now know it — and since that first trip in 1993 we’ve been looking to innovate. From opening up new destinations, such as Hamhung, to introducing new activities for tourists, as seen in the country’s first-ever cycling tour, we continue to push things forward to this day.
We think the DPRK is one of the world’s most fascinating places. We also think it’s one of the least understood. Our unrivalled access, experience and passion mean that the world’s media often call upon us to share the insights gained through our many trips. But we’d much rather share this insider and expert knowledge with you in person — whether that's simply via email, or on a trip to Pyongyang and beyond.
Koryo Tours is deeply committed to responsible tourism. We take our commitments and responsibilities very seriously, both towards you, and your safety, as well as towards our partners in the DPRK and the country itself. For you, this includes an extensive pre-tour briefing at our office; for the DPRK we’re proud to support a number of humanitarian projects there, and have done so since the ’90s.
We're able to run a number of important projects thanks to your backing as someone who travels to the DPRK with us. These projects range from charity work, such as our support of eight orphanages within the country, to key cultural-engagement initiatives, such as our role in bringing architects and artists together from both sides of Korea's divided peninsula for the 2014 Venice Biennale.
Koryo Tours, its staff and its trips frequently feature in the media — whether that be as experts discussing travel to the DPRK, or coverage of one of our exciting tours. Please see below for a selection of stories about what we've been up to.
This railway route passes through towns and villages historically closed off to foreigners.
nationalgeographic.com2018 has been a landmark year. So is the 'hermit kingdom' finally opening up?
vice.comKoryo Tours took Michael Palin to North Korea for a Channel 5 travel series.
telegraph.co.ukExplore the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in this intriguing time-lapse of a city rarely seen by foreigners.
video.nationalgeographic.comA British expat who leads tours to the isolated DPRK explains why there are things to like about it.
telegraph.co.ukMeet the Beijing-based Briton seeking to promote ties with DPRK (North Korea) via travel and film.
ft.comA Beijing-based tour company specializing in North Korea tours is offering a rare train journey that goes far beyond the country's "already exposed" capital.
edition.cnn.comSimon Cockerell, general manager of Koryo Tours, tells the BBC about why tourists want to go on holiday to North Korea.
bbc.co.ukA group of tourists have become the first to complete a cycling tour of North Korea — on a trip organised by a British-run travel company.
[email protected] | + 86 10 6416 7544
Room A409, Jucai Building. No. 76 Caoyuan Hutong.
Dongcheng District, Beijing, 100027, PR China
中国北京市东城区草园胡同76号聚才大厦A 座409 室,
邮编:100027
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