The essence of the North Korean tourism industry is homogeneity and control. Visitors to North Korea, wherever they come from, go on guided tours and follow intense, mainly non-negotiable itineraries that vary little from tour to tour. Guides assigned to their groups accompany them from their arrival to their departure, by train or plane. Such tours are a typical tourist format for East Asia, and a continuation of the tourism format formerly found in China and the Soviet Union.

Most of North Korea’s current tourism infrastructure, hotels and so forth date from the halcyon Soviet Internationale