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The country briefly reopened to non-Russian tourists for the first time in five years in February, only to suspend entry again in March. Otto Weng’s first encounter with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea came through a telescope on the banks of the Yalu River. Gray hills. Empty roads. A place just out of reach. Last week, he became one of the first non-Russian tourists to cross the border in five years — and found a country eager to put its best foot forward. Students at a lavishly decorated school performed a skit titled “We Are Happy”; factories bustled with activity; and children danced in space-aged costumes. For Weng, a 24-year-old lifestyle vlogger with 500,000 followers on video platform Bilibili, the four-day trip was an exciting, if occasionally nerve-wracking, success. He returned with 700 gigabytes of footage from one of the world’s most isolated nations. But for the handful of agencies that specialize in tourism to North Korea, the picture was cloudier
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