About the Author
Ifang Bremer
Ifang Bremer is a Seoul Correspondent at NK News. He has worked on investigations for The Guardian and The Observer and previously wrote features on Korea for Dutch newspaper NRC.
Setting up a travel agency specializing in North Korea tourism is a tricky undertaking. It requires navigating international sanctions and travel bans, as well as nurturing contacts with DPRK officials to arrange access. For South Koreans, it’s all but impossible due to restrictions on meeting and doing business with anyone from their country’s communist rival without government approval.
And yet according to U.K. records, a 46-year-old ROK national named An Sang Kwan managed to do just that, registering a company called The North Korean Travel Agency in Europe Limited back in 2017.