North Korea (DPRK) visa guide

Very little about entry to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is published by the state itself. The website of the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs carries news and statements but no visa or consular section, and the only official description of entry rules we could find is a short Entry Procedures note on Naenara, the state's multilingual web portal. This guide is therefore deliberately brief and limited to what that material says.

According to Naenara, tourists receive their entry visa from DPRK diplomatic missions or from DPRK tourist agencies abroad. No official page lists visa fees, application forms, processing times, required documents, exempt nationalities, an e-visa or a visa on arrival, and none of the DPRK sources we read describes work, study, family or residence visas or an asylum procedure.

Naenara names the State General Bureau of Tourism, a government body founded on 24 August 1953, as the authority for tourism, and the state-owned Korea International Travel Company as the operator of sightseeing and special-interest tours. Its transport information, covering flights to Pyongyang from Beijing, Shenyang, Kuala Lumpur and Vladivostok and trains from Beijing, Dandong and Moscow, is based on a 2018 timetable and may no longer be current.