- North Korea recently permitted hundreds of international visitors, including a band of Western social media influencers.
- The visit didn't go so well — at least in the eyes of North Korea: visits have been suspended.
- Some of the visitors believe that the tough questions and incessant filming that comes with social media influencing rattled North Korea's desired image too much.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — also known as the DPRK or North Korea — is a highly secretive, centralized totalitarian state, maintaining strict media and political control and disallowing immigration and emigration. However, the country does occasionally permit tourism.
International visitors have returned to the DPRK for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic resealed the North Korean border. Visitors from Russia, an ally of the DPRK, traveled to Pyongyang, the capital, in February 2024; in February 2025, visitors from Britain, Canada, France and Germany arrived in the city of Rason.
But after just a few short weeks of visits, North Korea has once again closed its borders. What went wrong?
In a word: YouTube.
Western influencers rattle North Korean image
The DPRK is home to beaches, lofty mountains, sacred Buddhist temples, the tombs of ancient kings and multiple UNESCO World heritage sites — all under the purview of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, who has been in office since 2011. State television is carefully censored and tries to project an image of strength and government support.
Nevertheless, in the age of influencers, controversial videos and clickbait, it is tough to control such a media image.
Pyongyang has occasionally made international ventures, and in the past, has allowed international tourists to visit more frequently than it does now.
In particular, the government hosted the first Pyongyang International Marathon in six years in April 2025 and invited 200 international competitors, who quickly swallowed up the spots, spending thousands of Euros in the process. Among them were many influencers, including British social media influencer Harry Jaggard.
He said that 10% of people who came for the marathon were athletes. The other 90% were social media influencers.
“The tour guides definitely weren’t expecting it ... they said they’d never seen this many cameras pointing at them,” said Jaggard.
“One of the rules they told us was you gotta ask to film. ... People were filming in places they shouldn’t be film(ing),” he added.
The influencers were permitted to travel among real people, though always accompanied by a tour guide and occasionally paid actors.
The influencers posed tough questions, including asking Jaggard’s questions about Kim Jong Un’s daughter and the succession of the supreme leader — apparently throwing off the careful rhythm of DPRK tours, according to Jaggard’s footage, which was published by CNN.
Many recent tourist groups have traveled with British travel agency Koryo Tours, which offers a rare window into the DPRK. It has run international tours to North Korea for 32 years, but not without frequent cancellations from the North Korean government and the occasional international incident — including the mass cancellations that followed the influencer visit.
“There’s some people in Pyongyang who looked at the footage that came out from those YouTubers and thought it didn’t reflect positively,” said Justin Martell, an American guide who operates tours to North Korea.
Hundreds of visas for upcoming events were canceled, including visas for Chinese and Russian visitors.
Martell reported that the North Korean government said the cancellations were made “in the national interest.”
Support is building for an American relationship with the DPRK
During his first term, President Donald Trump made history by visiting Kim Jong Un in the demilitarized zone and actually crossing into North Korea.
He was the first incumbent U.S. president to do so. Kim appeared “overjoyed” at the meeting and seemed to desire a more positive shared future with America, calling his relationship with Trump “excellent.”
That visit was in 2019. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic circled the world, abruptly shutting off relations with the DPRK.
According to Axios, Trump has been quietly planning more dialogue with North Korea. Kim has recently made “alarming” nuclear advancements and the American government has indicated interest in reconnecting with the DPRK — perhaps to further encourage disarmament.
“We are convening agencies to understand where the North Koreans are today,” said a senior U.S. official privy to the matter. “A lot has changed in the last four years. We are evaluating, diagnosing and talking about potential avenues, including engagement.”
New survey results indicate growing support for a relationship with the DPRK. A majority of American adults (70%) believe that Trump should again meet with Kim and that the U.S. should collaborate with North Korea to reunite Korean-Americans with their North Korean family members.
Half say that the U.S. should formally end the Korean War by signing a peace agreement. For context, many of the countries formally agreed to an armistice in 1953. South Korea did not. The war did not officially end, but the Korean peninsula largely remains at peace. The demilitarized zone, or the DMZ, signals the borders between the two countries.
Since then, efforts have been made to formally end the war, most recently in 2018, but they have so far failed.