Welcome to the Young Pioneer Tours blog about everything North Korea, and all of our other special off the beaten the track destinations.
Since starting in 2008 we have seen blogging about North Korea and our other great destinations as a great way to engage with our customers and to show the world a slice of life in the great destinations we visit.
Due to the mass amount of great content we create, as well as receive from our Pioneers we have since started our travel lifestyle magazine “The Young Pioneer”.
We’re always looking for contributors to our sites, so feel free to browse through our blogs, and , get in touch if you’d like to write for us.
Check out and subscribe to the YPT Blog and travel magazine
January 23, 2020 / by John McGovern
Here at YPT we get quite a lot of questions about travelling to the DPRK with children, so here are our handy answers to some of these questions! What is the age limit to join one of your group tours? To sign up individually for one of our group tours …
January 23, 2020 / by Gareth Johnson
Maunsell Fort If you are somehow reading the Young Pioneer Tours blog, then I will go all out and assume that you have heard of the Principality of Sealand. In case you have not, and I will keep it brief; Sealand was previously a WW2 fort off the Briti …
January 23, 2020 / by Dominic Perry
Qingdao Airlines plane Shandong-based airline Qingdao Airlines has recently been announced as the third airline company with permission to launch flights to north Korea. People flying from the cities of Qingdao, Zhengzhou and Quanzhou will be able to f …
January 22, 2020 / by Gareth Johnson
With the news that the DPRK has closed its borders following concerns about the latest coronavirus strain discovered in central China, a great many Spring Festival travellers have been forced to alter their travel plans and either cancel outright, or m …
January 22, 2020 / by Gareth Johnson
Tuvalu is basically my new favorite country on earth, you can read a few things I’ve written about the place here, and here. I am most famous for, aside from travel, liking street food, and drinking, I also like football. Tuvalu needs no help from me o …
January 21, 2020 / by YPT Team
As of Wednesday the 22nd of January, 2020, the DPRK will temporarily close its borders to all foreign tourists as a precaution to the Coronavirus. Whilst the current border closure time is undefined we have been reassured by the Korean authorities that …
January 16, 2020 / by Gareth Johnson
It’s no secret that the USSR wasn’t exactly a bastion of human rights. Show trials and executions, the mass deportation of political prisoners and the practice of “unpersoning” undesirables – executing them and then effectively erasing them from histor …
January 16, 2020 / by Dominic Perry
When asking the question of Korean territorial borders, you’ll find there’s a lot more debate than you’d expect. Of course there’s the question of whether the North or South is the ‘true’ Korea, with each refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the o …
January 16, 2020 / by Dominic Perry
East Timor/Timor-Leste is one of the world’s newest countries, having only become an independent state as of the 20th May 2002. In all the time leading up to this, they have variously been under colonisation by the Netherlands, Indonesia and Portugal, …