Air China Resumes Direct Beijing-Pyongyang Flights After Pandemic Hiatus
Air China has officially restarted direct flights between Beijing and Pyongyang on Monday, marking the first such service since the global pandemic disrupted international travel. However, North Korea is currently maintaining strict entry restrictions, permitting only travelers with official business or other special purposes to enter the country at this time.
The State of Tourism in North Korea: A Complex Landscape
Before both North Korea and China closed their borders due to Covid-19, tourism statistics revealed significant visitor numbers. According to South Korea's Institute for International Economic Policy, North Korea welcomed an estimated 300,000 foreign visitors in 2019, with approximately 90 percent of them being Chinese nationals. Additionally, about 5,000 Western tourists were thought to visit annually before the pandemic.
Western tourism faced a major setback when the United States implemented a travel ban following the imprisonment and subsequent death of American student Otto Warmbier in 2017. In a notable shift, North Korea permitted Russian tourists to visit in 2024, and Western tour operators briefly returned in February 2025 for tightly controlled visits.
British visitor Ben Weston shared his experience with the BBC, stating, "A couple of times I even had to let (the guides) know when I wanted to use the bathroom." This highlights the stringent supervision foreign tourists face during their stays.
Russian tourists had been anticipated to flock to a new beach resort dubbed "North Korea's Waikiki," but authorities announced last July that foreigners were barred from the area. Some foreigners did manage to visit Pyongyang in April 2025 to attend the city's first marathon since 2019, though this year's edition was abruptly cancelled without explanation.
Current Travel Possibilities and Infrastructure Developments
While Air China has just resumed flights, North Korea's own airline, Air Koryo, had already restarted flights from Beijing to Pyongyang back in 2023. Rail freight traffic between the two nations resumed in late 2022, but passenger trains linking Beijing and Pyongyang only restarted on March 13 after a six-year pause.
Those traveling between China and North Korea so far are believed to be primarily students, workers, and individuals with family ties across the border. However, Chinese travel agencies have begun advertising tour packages to North Korea starting in April, as have foreign firms like Young Pioneer Tours, which previously facilitated Western visitors traveling through China.
China-North Korea Relations: A Decades-Long Partnership
China has served as North Korea's main trading partner and a crucial source of diplomatic and economic support for the country of 26 million people for decades. This support has included exports of Chinese food—particularly during the famine that ravaged North Korea in the 1990s—and energy supplies.
Annual bilateral trade, which reportedly includes a significant component of wigs manufactured in North Korea, has recovered since the pandemic to nearly $3 billion. Despite this economic interdependence, analysts note that Beijing has historically experienced a bumpy relationship with Pyongyang, with the nuclear-armed North often viewed as something of a liability.
Recent geopolitical volatility, stemming from Russia's war in Ukraine and the turbulent second term of former US President Donald Trump, has elevated Kim Jong Un's global profile. Demonstrating his enhanced status, Kim appeared alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin at a military parade in Beijing last year.
Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Kyungnam University, emphasized that the conflict in Iran particularly increases "the need for closer coordination between Pyongyang and Beijing." He told AFP that the Middle East conflict has made "solidarity among countries pushing back against US hegemony" all the more important.
Russia's Growing Role and North Korea's Strategic Calculations
Kim Jong Un has dispatched thousands of troops to support Russia's war in Ukraine—with Seoul estimating approximately 2,000 casualties—along with missiles and munitions. In return, analysts suggest North Korea is receiving financial aid, military technology, food, and energy from Russia, thereby helping Pyongyang reduce its reliance on China.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea in 2024, further solidifying this partnership. This growing relationship is evident in the fact that transport links with Russia were opened earlier than those with China.
Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Centre, told AFP, "The reopening of these borders has been driven primarily by Pyongyang's timeline, which challenges the outdated assumption that Beijing dictates terms to a dependent client state."
China's Strategic Position and Future Negotiations
Nonetheless, China can still leverage its influence over North Korea, particularly as former President Donald Trump prepares to visit Beijing in May. This influence could be especially significant if Xi Jinping can persuade Kim Jong Un to attend the same meetings.
Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korea studies at the University of Oslo, noted, "It's only logical that Beijing is trying to emphasise its closeness to Pyongyang ahead of crucial negotiations with the US."
Lee observed that Beijing is shifting away from efforts to "coerce denuclearisation" of North Korea and instead moving toward "underwriting regime durability." He explained to AFP, "By reopening the physical arteries of connectivity, China is demonstrating that a nuclear-armed North Korea is a settled geopolitical reality, not a negotiable variable."
