It is the second time in a decade that the North Korean authorities have shot tourism in the foot with a reckless act of state agencies, the first instance being in 2008 when a South Korea traveler was shot and killed by border police upon meandering a bit into North Korean territory at the heavily militarized border.
Travel from South Korea plummeted after that as government directed agencies to cut tour visits.
As US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was banning the use of US passports to travel to North Korea, the militarized enclave north of the 38th parallel was expected to test another intermediate or intercontinental ballistic missile around Thursday July 27.
Reports by US Army headquarters, the Pentagon said that the Pentagon had picked up signs that North Korea was preparing for another missile test. This dating expectation reflects the value placed on it by the regime, as the last test, of an intercontinental ballistic missile, took place on July 4,the day of independence in the United States.
North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un, making fun of his intractable hostility towards the US, said the missile test on such a day was a ‘gift to American bastards.’
There were also diplomatic moves between China and the United States on further sanctions against the iron-fisted regime of the communist monarchy, which demonstrates China’s dualistic position in relation to North Korea, as it regularly returns North Korean citizens fleeing from the closed state and using Chinese territory to travel to Vietnam and onwards to South Korea.
A family of five perished in mid-July by suicide after the family members were arrested before crossing into Vietnam from China, and risked being returned to Pyongyang. The father was a senior regional official in the Korean Workers Party, the militarized political organ ruling there.
The new missile test was billed to take place on 27 July as it is the 64th anniversary of the signing of the Korean armistice agreement, a public holiday in North Korea and celebrated as Victory Day.
A Pentagon official said the test would be of either an intermediate-range missile or North Korea’s ICBM – known as a KN-20 or a Hwasong-14.
That would be the second time Pyongyang has tested an ICBM, after its 4th of July rocket launch that caused global alarm.
Experts said it could have put Alaska in range, bringing Pyongyang’s long-held dream of a missile that can deliver an atomic warhead to the US within reach, and presenting Donald Trump with a stark challenge. Still the US was bent on sanctions on states trading with the hermit state.
South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted a government official as saying Seoul had seen North Korea moving transporter erector launchers carrying ICBM launch tubes in North Pyongan province. “They’re setting up for something,” a second US defense official told AFP.
After North Korea’s 4th of July test, the US launched a push at the UN for tougher measures against Pyongyang. US ambassador Nikki Haley at the start of the week cited progress in talks with China on imposing a new raft of measures. The UN envoy noted that China was negotiating with Russia separately on possible tougher sanctions.
That will be hard for both countries need the current regime in North Korea to act as a trouble spot for the United States, sapping its resources.
A North Korean official in the tourism industry hit world headlines when he declared that the hermit state does not care about a ban on travel there by US citizens.
Washington's ban on US citizens travelling to North Korea will have no effect on the country's tourism industry and Pyongyang does not care about it "at all", a senior development official insisted Tuesday.
While ban was to be officially imposed towards the end of the week, it would take effect a month later, implying towards the end of August. Analysts say US citizens constitute about 20 per cent of tourist visits to North Korea, but fears of rising tensions owing to missile tests and positions by the Trump administration that a military operation against North Korea wasn’t off the table were scaring tourists.
Due to the tensions and the death of Otto Warmbier, bookings fell by half. Reports say that around 5,000 Western tourists visit North Korea each year on the basis of data collected from tour companies, where standard one-week trips cost about $2,000.
Agencies quoted remarks by Han Chol-Su, vice-director of the Wonsan Zone Development Corporation, located on a prime coastal zone attracting large batches of tourists, who denied the loss of business would have any impact.
"If the US government says Americans cannot come to this country, we don't care a bit," he told AFP in Pyongyang.
Washington announced the move after the death of Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who was sentenced to 15 years' hard labour in the North for trying to steal a propaganda poster.
The charge appears to have been framed so that the hermit state authorities extract concessions from the Obama administration,, which they failed to obtain and reduced the student to a comma by torture, if not poisoning too.
Warmbier was sent home in a coma early June, with Pyongyang trying to explain he contracted botulism, and he died soon afterwards. Images of the student in the hands of North Korean police were seen all over the world, and few were impressed when the Pyongyang authorities attempted to hazard a guess for the disease, while it regularly executes anyone thought to be disloyal to the supreme leader. Warmbier’s murder and missile tests place North Korean tourism on its knees.
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