China halts some overland tourism to North Korea-travel agencies

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities in the northeastern city of Dandong have told tour agencies to halt overland tourism into North Korea, local travel agents said on Wednesday, as Pyongyang whips up war rhetoric following weeks of tension on the Korean peninsula.

"All (tourist) travel to North Korea has been stopped from today, and I've no idea when it will restart," a travel agent in Dandong told Reuters by telephone.

"I think it is because of the situation in North Korea," she said, declining to give her name.

Four other travel agencies confirmed they had stopped tours that use the land border crossing into North Korea at Dandong. One cited a notice from the government tourism bureau in Dandong. There was no indication it was a nationwide tourism ban.

The border remains open to commercial traffic, the travel agencies said.

However The Pyongyang Project, a Vancouver-based travel and educational exchange group, said via Twitter that a North Korean tourism official in Yanji, another Chinese border city, told them tourism to the North Korean cities of Rason and Chongjin would be unaffected.

Hannah Barraclough, a tour guide with Beijing-based Koryo Tours that organizes visits to North Korea by air, said the company had not received any notice to halt tours.

"It's business as usual for us," she said.

Zhang Jianzhong, a National Tourism Administration official in Beijing, said he didn't know about suspending tourism to North Korea.

Chinese authorities have temporarily halted travel to North Korea in the past in times of volatility on the Korean peninsula.

North Korean anger over the imposition of U.N. sanctions after its last nuclear arms test in February has created one of the worst periods of tension on the divided peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

The north ratcheted up threats to attack South Korea and the United States on Tuesday, and warned foreigners in South Korea to evacuate to avoid a "thermonuclear war."

Foreign travel to North Korea is highly restricted, and independent travel without tour agencies is almost impossible.

China, the North's only diplomatic ally, has repeatedly called for calm and restraint. China opposes taking any steps to worsen the situation in the region, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said.

(Reporting by Sally Huang, Megha Rajagopalan and Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Hui Li; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-halts-overland-tourism-north-korea-travel-agencies-062505186.html

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