N Korea bans most Chinese tour groups

BEIJING: North Korea has suddenly banned nearly all Chinese tour groups, citing a need to fix its roads and railways, travel agencies in China said on Sunday.

North Korea's National Tourism Administration issued the notice to Chinese tour organizers in the middle of last month, said an executive with the Guotai Travel Agency in Dandong, a Chinese border city.

"All tours have been suspended, apart from business and trade groups and groups made up of ethnic Koreans from China," said the executive, who declined to be named.

An official with the Zhongqing Travel Agency, also in Dandong, confirmed North Korea's decision to suspend tour groups.

"They said it was because of maintenance of railways and roads," said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

An official with the China International Travel Service gave a different reason, saying North Korea had explained the quota for Chinese tourists had been used up for this year.

"It's our experience that North Korea suspends tours regularly, every two or three years," he said.

Last time was in the late summer of 2004 when Chinese state media said it was due to unspecified "domestic circumstances."

The secretive communist state has been under international pressure since test-firing seven missiles that splashed down in the Sea of Japan on July 5.

The United States has stepped up pressure on China, the North's closest ally, to take stronger action following the launches and to urge North Korea to return to six-nation talks on ending its nuclear weapons programme.