Traveler goes viral for trip to one of the most secretive places on Earth
A British traveler recently went viral after documenting his unique experience as one of the first Western tourists to visit North Korea in over half a decade.
Mike O’Kennedy boasts more than half a million followers on his YouTube channel, “Mike Okay.” His travel documentary about his journey to North Korea, “Inside North Korea After 5 Years of Isolation,” accrued over 3 million views in the first week since it was posted on Feb. 28.
O’Kennedy, who said that he likes to “do things as uncensored as possible,” spoke with Fox News Digital about his experience visiting the isolated country. He arrived in the city of Rason on Feb. 20. (See the video at the top of this article.)
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“My main kind of takeaway was that this is an incredibly developing country that is at least 50 years behind anyone else,” O’Kennedy said. “It’s where China was… in the mid[dle] of the last century.”
“I’m not qualified to talk about it politically,” he continued. “But what I can say is, it’s an incredibly proud country.”
O’Kennedy’s candid video of the trip showed several strange situations. While flying over North Korea, he and his fellow plane passengers were required to keep their window blinds closed to prevent them from seeing the country from the air.
North Korea partially resumed international tourism last year after nearly half a decade, according to tourist operators.
“The Hermit Kingdom” closed its borders at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, banning almost all outsiders from entering the country for business, travel or non-vital diplomatic relations.
The country partially re-opened its borders in 2023, Fox News Digital reported.
However, reports now say that trips to North Korea, as of Thursday, have been canceled.
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“Just received news from our Korean partners that Rason is closed to everyone. We will keep you posted,” China-based KTG Tours, which specializes in North Korean tours, said Wednesday on Facebook, as BBC reported.
Since O’Kennedy’s visit, North Korea has once again closed its borders, suspending foreign tourism just weeks after it welcomed its first Western visitors.
At one point in his documentary, O’Kennedy is seen trying to open a window in his hotel room before realizing it’s been sealed shut.
“There were times where you could cut the tension with a knife. You could feel the weight of this moment.”
He told Fox News Digital that there was “pressure on the whole situation.”
“This is the first time any foreign tourists and non-Russian and non-Chinese tourists have entered the country for five years,” he said.
“So, there were times where you could cut the tension with a knife. You could feel the weight of this moment.”
Though O’Kennedy wasn’t granted the freedoms he would normally enjoy during his travels – such as interacting with locals, using the bathroom without permission and taking solo walks – he was still acutely aware of the special treatment that he and his fellow tourists were getting.
“Instead of it being like, ‘We’re not allowed to see this because that’s secret’ … it was just more that they just wanted to show you the best it had to offer,” he said. “I didn’t have this overwhelming feeling that this is a bad place.”
“There were plenty of enjoyable moments… It was just they were just shrouded by a constant kind of level of subtle buzz, of paranoia and anxiety.”
O’Kennedy said he witnessed dozens of enthusiastic children from Rason perform a song and dance dedicated to leader Kim Jong Un. The show included futuristic space costumes, a light show and visuals of rockets.
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“Almost every song that comes out of the DPRK is, as expected, a tool of worship toward the country’s current or former leaders,” he narrates in the video. “The recurring theme throughout this trip was the utter devotion people had towards Kim Jong Un… To them, he’s a god.”
“We did karaoke one night…drinking North Korean soju [and] North Korean beer, which is delicious, by the way.”
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But the expert traveler also said that he enjoyed simple pleasures on the trip, such as North Korean beer – though the food left something to be desired.
Many of the streets that O’Kennedy showed from Rason, North Korea, were eerily empty, he said. (@mikeokay via YouTube; Getty Images)
“We did karaoke one night … drinking North Korean soju [and] North Korean beer, which is delicious, by the way,” O’Kennedy recounted. “Smoking North Korean cigarettes with all guides, and singing karaoke with them. And that was pretty cool. That was a pretty fun thing to do.”
He added, “The food was nothing to write home about for me. It didn’t feel like anything I’d really had in Asia before. Maybe toward the weirder side of, like, Chinese cuisine with … sea slugs and clams. And we had a flaming snail at one point.”
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O’Kennedy also said that he had never encountered an area remotely similar to North Korea before.
The Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in northwestern China was the only place that came close.
A group of North Korean children performed an elaborate show in honor of Kim Jong Un during O’Kennedy’s trip. (@mikeokay via YouTube; Getty Images)
“I was doing a lot of hitchhiking and stuff [in Xinjiang], and the police would just pop up out of nowhere a few times … They don’t get any foreigners out there at all, really,” he said.
“So, there was a level of [a] kind of control and curiosity, but not on the same level as [North Korea] was. This was very restricted to the point where it sometimes felt a little bit claustrophobic.”
O’Kennedy said he expects that tourism in North Korea will go back to its restricted, pre-pandemic levels. He also hopes that more tourists get the chance to interact with North Koreans.
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“The more people go to North Korea, the more North Koreans we get to meet. And I personally think that’s a step forward for the world.”
O’Kennedy’s documentary can be viewed on YouTube.
Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
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