Young Pioneer Tours

Young Pioneer Tours is an independent travel company based in Xi'an, China, which specialises in budget group and independent tours to North Korea.

History

Founded in 2008 by British expat Gareth Johnson, the company caters in particular for the adventurous traveler on a budget.[1] Its motto is "group tours for people who hate group tours", referring to the fact that at present all foreign tourists in North Korea must be accompanied by a guide.[2]

More recently it has branched out to international travel, developing on the theme of 'tours to places your mother wants you to stay away from' to include other politically tense or off-the-beaten-track destinations such as Iran, Iraq, Eastern Europe and Russia (Eurasia), Armenia, Antarctica, Cuba, Burma, Tibet and Xinjiang.[3]

Tours

Group tours to North Korea are accompanied by a Western guide and two Korean guides. Independent tours are accompanied by Korean guides only. Tour locations include Pyongyang, Nampo, Chongjin, Hamhung, the Rason Special Economic Zone, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone, where the country is separated from South Korea.[4]

Specialist Political and Business interest tours are operated by Canadian consultant Michael Spavor, who organised a series of delegations to North Korea with NBA hall of famer Dennis Rodman.[5][6]

Young Pioneer Tours have been at the forefront of tourism development in the DPRK, being the first company to organise Scuba diving tours,[7] Parkour tours,[8] fishing tours and Juche Study tours.[9]

Media

The company has courted both positive and negative press for its tours to North Korea, which range from cultural and sporting trips to pub crawls for St Patrick's Day and New Years Eve. It has featured on numerous mainstream news sites such as CNN, ABC News, the BBC,[10] Reuters,[11] and The Guardian.[12][13][14]

On January 2, 2016, Otto Frederick Warmbier, an American student traveling on a tour organized by the company, was detained by the North Korean government and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for attempting to steal a propaganda sign from a hotel in Pyongyang.[15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Young Pioneer Tours homepage".
  2. ↑ "Young Pioneer Tours 2014 tours page".
  3. ↑ "Young Pioneer Tours 2013 international tour itineraries".
  4. ↑ "DPRK Tours".
  5. ↑ "Michael Spavor: About".
  6. ↑ "The Canadian behind Dennis Rodman’s travels in North Korea".
  7. ↑ "Scuba Diving Tour - Young Pioneer Tours".
  8. ↑ "Breathe Parkour".
  9. ↑ "Chinese travel agency offers new North Korea Tours to study Juche".
  10. ↑ "North Korea allows foreign visitors to use own mobiles".
  11. ↑ "North Korea to restart domestic scheduled flights as tourism grows".
  12. ↑ "North Korea bars tourists over Ebola concerns".
  13. ↑ "ABC Interview with Gareth Johnson".
  14. ↑ "CNN Interview with Wolf Blitzer".
  15. ↑ Fifield, Anna. "North Korea sentences U-Va. student to 15 years of hard labor in prison". www.washingtonpost.com/. Nash Holdings LLC. Retrieved 16 March 2016.

External links

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