A travel service company in China is inviting foreigners to serve as volunteer farmers in Kim Jong Un’s notoriously oppressive North Korea.
Young Pioneer Tours (YPT) is an expat-operated tour company based out of China that’s been offering tours to North Korea since 2008 and, as of 2016, a new package that includes farming for the benefit of Kim Jong Un and his starving people
YPT reports that the authoritarian North Korean regime has become much more receptive to tourism in recent years, perhaps to create a greater influx of foreign currency.
“Pioneers” traveling with YPT can experience the mysteries of Pyongyang, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and other North Korean sights.
In addition to tours of North Korea, YPT offers foreigners the opportunity to take part in charitable activities, one of which involves volunteering to work on a collective farm.
The Farming Volunteer Program is a nonprofit project that allows “pioneers” to “step very far from the beaten track and go see how life living and working on a cooperative farm really is.”
Volunteers head to Chilgol Farm, just outside of Pyongyang, where hundreds of Korean families grow cabbage, rice, tobacco, sesame seeds, plums, and so on.
In addition to farming volunteers, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) began recruiting volunteer English teachers in January of last year.
Otto Warmbier is a cautionary tale for would-be YPT travelers. Warmbier is a 21-year-old American student who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly attempting to steal a political poster while on a YPT tour of North Korea.
“Despite what you may hear, North Korea is probably one of the safest places on Earth to visit,” explains YPT’s website. North Korea is one of the most isolated and heavily-sanctioned countries in the world.
The U.S. Department of State says U.S. citizens should avoid traveling to North Korea “due to the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea’s system of law enforcement, which imposes unduly harsh sentences.” U.S. travelers run the risk of being treated in accordance with “wartime law of the DPRK.” At least 14 U.S. citizens have been detained during the last decade.
“The State Department remains deeply concerned about the DPRK’s ongoing, systematic, and widespread human rights violations,” explained the department’s most recent travel warning for North Korea.
The U.S. does not have diplomatic or consular relations with the North Korea, so American travelers should enter at their own risk.
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