Kim Jong-un uses Western tourists to perform backbreaking jobs by disguising the work as North Korean ‘labour tour’ experiences
A North Korean tourism website claims the experience allows westerners to meet 'cheerful' local workers
SHOCKING pictures show western tourists labouring in fields in North Korea as part of a bizarre holiday package.
A website run by the hermit kingdom’s tourist board says the “labour tour” promises to offer naïve westerners an insight into a “different labour life.”
The maniacal regime says the unconventional activity will allow tourists to see “cheerful” locals working in fields, reports .
Of course, the secretive state is known for its deadly slave labour camps where prisoners are forced into back-breaking work.
But much like any other tourist activity in North Korea, the labour tour is a propaganda exercise in a country where the impoverished masses live in constant fear of Kim Jong-un’s ruthless regime.
The tourist website reads: "Through the tours they can get an understanding of the agricultural policy and farming culture and experience the diligent, cheerful profiles of the local people's labour activities.”
Professor Gareth Shaw, who lectures on tourism at University of Exeter, said tourists may volunteer in the fields for charitable reasons.
Speaking with The Mirror, he said: “The kind of tourists [who take trips like this] tends to be a mix of retired people and younger people who are interested for moral reasons in volunteering.
“There’s been a couple of studies on volunteer tourism showing it’s people trying to improve their wellbeing as people, but this work doesn’t sound like that, it sounds more like hard labour.”
Meanwhile, experts claim North Korea could cause a radioactive disaster which would kill millions if it continues to test nuclear weapons.
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War-hungry dictator Kim fired a hydrogen bomb earlier this month and experts are warning that further tests could cause a radiation leak.
Speaking with the Daily Star, Paik Hak-soon, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, said the “possibility of a radiation leak there is growing”.
The September 3 test in the hermit kingdom’s North Hamgyong province was its sixth and most powerful test to date.
And North Korea’s only major ally China said that the continued nuke test pose a “huge threat” of a radiation leak.
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