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Travelling to North Korea (double nationality)

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  1. #1

    Travelling to North Korea (double nationality)

    Hi everyone!

    I'm a holder of

    • a foreign passport from Europe
    • a permanent resident card from HK
    • a Home Return Permit


    The plan is to travel to North Korea through a Chinese tour operator. Entering China would be done with my home return permit but I was wondering what I should do with the visa situation?

    Should I apply for a North Korea Visum as Hong Kong or Belgian citizen? Does it matter which (as I understood some things are pretty sensitive, I wouldn't want to loose my home return permit for example)? I thought of applying for a travel visa in Hong Kong if needed but then I wonder if I have the rights to do so?

    It's all so complex ..hope someone can help me here!

    Thanks

    Wing

  2. #2

    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Posts
    6,745

    You can use either passport.
    The only concern is with US immigration law,
    A visit to rocket man might adversely impact your next visa exempt attempt to USA with your Belgian passport.
    For example, if I were to visit Iran on my Chinese passport it would mean that From then on I must obtain a visa for USA, no matter what other passport I use for my trip to USA.

    You will not get your hrtp revoked over this trivial thing, that's reserved for other, more active people

    pingwing likes this.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Posts
    706
    Quote Originally Posted by Morrison:
    A visit to rocket man might adversely impact your next visa exempt attempt to USA with your Belgian passport.
    When I went to North Korea (around 10 years ago though) they did not put the visa in your passport they put it on a separate page which was simply placed in your passport for the trip and then removed. So no other country would know you went to North Korea.

    I would ask the tour company who you are going with about whether this is still the case

    I would personally use the Belgian Passport just in case anything goes wrong. Also we were advised not to let any doctor in North Korea touch us, if we got sick we must insist on seeing the doctor at the Swedish Embassy (which was the largest at the time, not sure if it still is). As people have gotten more ill from the north korean medicine than they were from the sickness. If you are on a Belgian passport I think the Swedes would look after you.

    In terms of getting in trouble, don't be an idiot, do what you are told, and if the tour guide does not give you a briefing on what is and is not allowed in the country then google it before you go. For example do not fold a picture of Kim. Be very careful of images etc, a guy got deported and had to write a very long apology letter just before we went for putting the newspaper on his bed and his socks on the newspaper (the paper had a photo of Kim Jung Il on it). They would not send my postcards where the stamp was not straight as it was disrespectful. Just be respectful and you will be fine.

    I would suggest just limiting the booze you have. We did a lot of ten pin bowling at the hotel we were at as it was really all there wasn't a lot to do apart from gamble at the hotel. The Micro Brewery was surprisingly good. So we drank and bowled in the evenings. Clearly not what everyone does as they then added a stop at the local ten pin bowling alley into our itinerary and wanted us to play the local team (it was like 40 lanes and they were seriously good, we were rubbish). We managed to politely decline and just play a game there instead.

    Also the roller coaster, just FYI, centrifugal forces will hold you in your seat in a loup-de-loup so when the bar doesn't close don't worry about imminent death. Just do hold on tight just to be sure (we all survived). They hopefully have upgraded the roller coaster maintenance since then (we went to theme parks 1 and 3 and neither had had maintenance or renovations since they were built in the 80s clearly.)

    For what its worth I personally think it's an amazing trip and from what I've heard things have opened up a lot since I went. However it will still be quite the experience. While others disagree with tourism to countries like this, I found it enlightening.

  4. #4

    thanks so much for the replies!