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North Korea to Welcome Russian Tourists, the Country's First since the Pandemic, Report Says

Russian and North Korean flags fly at the Vostochny Сosmodrome, the venue of the meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, September 13, 2023. Sputnik/Artem Geodakyan/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Russian and North Korean flags fly at the Vostochny Сosmodrome, the venue of the meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, September 13, 2023. Sputnik/Artem Geodakyan/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
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North Korea to Welcome Russian Tourists, the Country's First since the Pandemic, Report Says

Russian and North Korean flags fly at the Vostochny Сosmodrome, the venue of the meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, September 13, 2023. Sputnik/Artem Geodakyan/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
Russian and North Korean flags fly at the Vostochny Сosmodrome, the venue of the meeting between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, in the far eastern Amur region, Russia, September 13, 2023. Sputnik/Artem Geodakyan/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

Russian tourists reportedly going on a ski trip to North Korea will be the first international travelers to visit the country since its borders closed in 2020 amid the global pandemic lockdown.
The report, published Wednesday by the Russian state-run Tass news agency, underscores deepening cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. It also follows the meeting last September between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, The Associated Press said.
Tass did not specify a timeframe but the report brought some surprise to Asia observers who had expected the first post-pandemic tourists to North Korea to come from China, the North’s biggest diplomatic ally and economic pipeline.
According to Tass, an unspecified number of tourists from Russia's far eastern region of Primorye will first fly to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, where they will visit monuments such as the “Tower of Juche Idea,” named after the North’s guiding philosophy of “juche” or self-reliance.
The tourists will then travel on to the North’s Masik Pass on the east coast, where the country’s most modern ski resort is located, Tass said. It said the trip was arranged under an agreement reached between Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of the Primorye region, and North Korean authorities.
Kozhemyako traveled to Pyongyang in December for talks on boosting economic ties as part of a flurry of bilateral exchanges since the Kim-Putin summit. Ahead of the trip, he told Russian media he expected to discuss tourism, agriculture and trade cooperation.
The Kim-Putin summit deepened outside belief that North Korea is supplying conventional arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine, in return for high-tech Russian weapons technologies.
The White House said last week that it has evidence Russia fired additional North Korea-provided missiles at Ukraine. The United States, South Korea, Japan and others issued a joint statement condemning the missile's transfer.
North Korea and Russia are locked in separate confrontations with the United States and its allies — North Korea for its advancing nuclear program and Russia for its protracted war with Ukraine.
North Korea has been slowly easing pandemic-era curbs and opening its international borders as part of its efforts to revive its economy devastated by the lockdown and persistent US-led sanctions. Its reputation also suffered a blow in August 2022, when Pyongyang made a highly dubious claim that it had beaten a domestic COVID-19 outbreak.
“For North Korea, tourism is the easiest way to earn foreign currency under the international sanctions regime,” said Koh Yu-hwan, former president of Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.
Koh said he expects Pyongyang to eventually also open North Korea to Chinese tourists.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said "visitors from Russia are unlikely to be as financially lucrative for North Korea as the return of more numerous visitors from China.”
“But the domestic political risk is relatively low while providing symbolism of revitalized relations with Moscow in line with Pyongyang’s current geopolitical narrative,” he added.

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Varieties

Year after Exodus, Silence Fills Panama Island Threatened by Sea

The evacuation of around 1,200 members of the Indigenous Guna community to a new life on the mainland was one of the first planned migrations in Latin America due to climate change. MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP
The evacuation of around 1,200 members of the Indigenous Guna community to a new life on the mainland was one of the first planned migrations in Latin America due to climate change. MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP
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Year after Exodus, Silence Fills Panama Island Threatened by Sea

The evacuation of around 1,200 members of the Indigenous Guna community to a new life on the mainland was one of the first planned migrations in Latin America due to climate change. MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP
The evacuation of around 1,200 members of the Indigenous Guna community to a new life on the mainland was one of the first planned migrations in Latin America due to climate change. MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP

Streets once filled with children's laughter have fallen silent on a Panamanian island where almost all residents left a year ago due to the threat of the sea swallowing their homes.

The evacuation of around 1,200 members of the Indigenous Guna community to a new life on the mainland was one of the first planned migrations in Latin America due to climate change.

The exodus from Gardi Sugdub in the Caribbean left those who remained with a sense of sadness, said Delfino Davies, who has a small museum on the island with spears, jars and animal bones.

"There are no friends left or children playing," he told AFP.

Gardi Sugdub now has the silence of a "dead island," he said.

Dusty desks and empty classrooms are all that remain of a school that once bustled with children.

Many of the island's wooden houses are padlocked.

"There's no one here. Sometimes I get sad when I'm here alone," Mayka Tejada, 47, said in the small store where she sells bananas, pumpkins, clothes, toys and notebooks.

Like Davies and about 100 others, she decided to stay.

But her mother and two children, aged 16 and 22, moved to one of the 300 houses built by the Panamanian government in a new neighborhood called Isber Yala on the mainland, a 15-minute boat ride away.

Gardi Sugdub, the size of around five football fields, is one of 49 inhabited islands in the Guna Yala archipelago -- also known as San Blas -- which scientists warn is in danger of disappearing by the end of the century.

'I'll die here'

Sitting in a hammock in her earthen-floor house filled with the aroma of medicinal herbs, 62-year-old Luciana Perez said she had no intention of leaving.

"I was born in Gardi and I'll die here. Nothing is sinking. Scientists don't know, only God," she said.

Perez said that she was not afraid because since she was a child she had seen big waves and rising waters flooding houses at times.

Steven Paton, a scientist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said climate change meant that sea levels were expected to rise by up to 80 centimeters.

"Most of the Guna Yala islands are about 50 centimeters above sea level," he told AFP. "They'll be underwater."

Ana Toni, CEO of the United Nations' COP30 climate conference, told AFP that the mass evacuation "shows the reality we already have to face on the planet."

Sidewalks, water, electricity

The arrival of the rainy season has left puddles dotting the dirt roads of Gardi Sugdub.

In contrast, in the new settlement of Isber Yala -- "land of loquats" in the Guna language -- the streets are paved and have sidewalks.

The nearly 50-square-meter (500-square-feet) concrete houses have flushing toilets and there is a plot of land to grow vegetables.

On Gardi Sugdub "we lived crowded together, and I had to go fetch water from the river in a small boat," said Magdalena Martinez, a 75-year-old retired teacher.

In Isber Yala, water is available for an hour in the morning, she said.

"I can fill the buckets. And I have electricity 24 hours a day," said Martinez, who lives with her granddaughter in the new neighborhood.

Tejada's children also have no regrets about leaving the island, she said.

"I miss them, but they're happy there. They have a place to play football and walk around," Tejada said.

While the island's school relocated to Isber Yala, its dilapidated clinic remained in Gardi Sugdub.

"Before, people came on foot. Now, they have to travel by land and sea to get here. There are fewer visitors," said 46-year-old doctor John Smith.

Some of the islanders divide their time between the two communities, while others visit occasionally to check on their homes.

This week, there will be more activity than normal: seven jars of chicha -- a fermented corn drink -- are ready for Isber Yala's first anniversary.

Martinez is looking forward to the celebration, even though it will be bittersweet.

Although she may not see it herself, "the islands will disappear because the sea will reclaim its territory," she said.