We’ve been the number one North Korea travel specialists for more than 20 years now — ever since Nick Bonner founded the company back in 1993. What we are not, however, are a bunch of laptop-wielding digital natives. That much would have been clear to any of you poor souls who had to navigate our hard-to-read and somewhat clunky old website, which, like Koyo Tours itself, was also launched in the ’90s.

Thankfully, that’s all in the past now, and anyone who visited our old site will have noticed a big change with what went before, and what we have now. This may be your first time on our site, however, in which case you may be surprised to learn that when it comes to technological innovations, we’re closer to a lumbering Luddite than a maverick Musk. So a big shout-out has to go to the awesome team at Built By Buffalo — our web design and development agency, who helped us with this year’s relaunch.

Working together, we’ve upgraded everything to make it all more user-friendly, informative, intuitive, and, well, just nicer looking! Our booking process has been refined and improved, the photography has been taken up a level, and the site is simply a better fit for what we do in this game. If you’ve not had a chance to have a good look around yet, why not take a few minutes to refamiliarise yourself with what your favourite travel company gets up to, and have a browse through our new, shiny pages. Who knows: you might even find a tour on the site that you’d like to book!

We’re making tweaks and improvements every day, so if you do find an unexpected glitch in The Matrix, then please do drop us a line, and we’ll get things fixed up for you faster than you can say: binary code. And if you get through our whole site and still want more, we’ve also put together a small guide below to some of our favourite DPRK-related (and other Asia-focused) places you can find on that there World Wide Web.

NKnews.org — creates detailed and original work about North Korea, as well as aggregating all the international news. This is a must-visit site for anyone with the slightest interest in the DPRK.

NKeconwatch.com — a blog focused on the DPRK’s economy, and changes therein. It’s also notable for the extremely detailed mapping project — labeling all the sites throughout the country — undertaken by the site’s creator. Be warned: it’s somewhat of a rabbit hole, which you can fall down for days at a time!

Pyongyang-metro.com — a bit geeky, but a very comprehensive look at the trains, lines, stations, and history of Pyongyang’s iconic transportation system. As an aside, if this one’s particularly up your street then you may be interested in our very special Train Tour (Sep 2017).

ChosonExchange.org — “supports North Korean entrepreneurs through business, economics and legal knowledge-sharing". A Singapore-based NGO that runs workshops and educational projects for North Koreans, in the DPRK and overseas.

GraniteStudio.org — the website of Beijing-based sinologist, historian, and tour guide Jeremiah Jenne, with posts on Chinese history and interesting cultural developments in and around China. His guided themed tours of famous Beijing sights are not to be missed — both in-depth and entertaining.

CalvertJournal.com — the self-described "guide to the New East", with excellent writing, photography and videos on contemporary culture in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans; worth checking out regularly. We particularly recommend their report on Red Africa, and Pyongyang's involvement there (February 2016).