VNK News: Exclusive interview with Lupine Travel's Dylan Harris on Visiting North Korea

Dylan Harris, who founded Lupine Travel in 2007, sells tours to the DPRK and has made numerous trips himself

Dylan Harris, director of British company of Lupine Travel, official partner of Visit North Korea, was kind to offer us some of his time in order to conduct an interview about his trips to North Korea. Dylan's company, founded in 2007, has been running North Korea tours on a monthly basis. Whilst the company offers tours to other "unique" destinations, such as Iran, Cuba, Iraqi Kurdistan and Chernobyl, the North Korea trips have long proved the most popular.

So we thought in this interview we'd ask him to shed some light and backward on his North Korea tours. Why did he start them? Why does he do them? Why does he recommend them? And more importantly, what can you gain from them?

1) What was it about the DPRK that motivated you to set up tours there?

"I first visited DPRK as a tourist and it was a visit that made a huge impact on me. It's the only place in the world that I have visited where I left with more questions that when I entered. It's an intriguing mysterious place, full of contradictions. It was a place I wanted to get back to, try to get under its skin and also to help others to experience what I did on that first trip."

2) What do you believe people can gain by visiting the DPRK?

"First of all it's a travel experience like no other. It's truly an utterly unique place. It's also a place that really challenges your mind and makes you think about your preconceptions of the place and what is true and what you've been led to believe by the media. This in turn can change your outlook on how you look at things in the future and how you challenge your own preconceptions."

3) What does Lupine Travel's DPRK tour package offer which other companies don't?

"We are a very small company that tries to add the personal touch to our tours and we stay friends with many of our clients after they've returned from their tours. We were also the first tour company to offer budget tours to North Korea when we set up in 2008. We are also in the unique position of being the only company to have rights to offer tours to the annual DPRK Amateur Golf Open."

4) Do you believe tourism to the DPRK has a positive impact on the country, if so, why?

"I fully understand there are two sides to this argument and both have very valid points but I believe the positives far outweigh the negatives. North Korea was closed off for tourism for so long and this led to the country become more and more sealed to outside influences. Now that tourism is growing, many North Koreans are able to see smiling foreign faces which will challenge their view of what the outside world is like. Also the importance of interaction with guides cannot be overstated. The guides are usually the children of diplomats and other important government figures and are likely to rise up into these kinds of jobs themselves in the future, so the interaction they have now with foreigners and the trickling down of information they receive may prove to be massively beneficial in the future in helping to open up the country."