A handful of tour operators in China have stopped their trips to North Korea, amidst Pyongyang's war rhetoric and suggestions that foreigners evacuate the country in preparation for what they say will surely come to the Korean peninsula.
Travel agents in the town of Dandong, which sits on the border of North Korea, have confirmed to Reuters that local authorities urged them to halt all land travel.
A total of six agencies claim they had to turn tourists back to their place of origin.
"There were tourists that were planning to go there today," a Dandong China International Travel service employee told Reuters, "but then we received the notification, so they've all gone back home."
One travel agent mentioned receiving an advisory from the government tourism bureau in Dandong.
The government officials, however, maintain that the tour companies ceased travel at their own will.
"Recently some Chinese travel agents and tourists, on seeing the tense situation on the Korean peninsula, canceled or postponed their travel plans for North Korea," said a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hong Lei. "At present, the China-North Korea border is as normal."
Cars and trucks rumbled past the North Korean border with ease Wednesday morning. Commercial traffic was still open to the public.
Despite threats from Pyongyang, China seems relatively unaffected by the possibility of imminent war. Some say that it won't even happen.
North Korea expert and professor at Seoul's Kookmin University Andrei Lankov recently stated that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is living too sweet of a life for him to risk it all by warring with South Korea.
"He is therefore the one person [we] can truly depend on to not go to war," he said in a meeting conducted in his office Tuesday.
For yet another handful of travel agencies and tour operators, things aren't too different.
Hanna Barraclough, who guides tours by air with a Beijing tourism company Koryo Tours, confirmed that she hadn't received any instructions to stop tours.
"It's business as usual for us," she told Reuters.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
