Troy Collings
\nOnline
\nPyongyang
\nThe head of the first budget travel agency to North Korea, Troy Collings, has died of a heart attack at 33.
\nHe was the co-founder and managing director of Young Pioneer Tours – an agency which focused on younger tourists who wanted to travel to the secretive communist country.
\nDriven by the goal of making visiting North Korea affordable, the company had a big impact on tourism to the North.
\nMr Collings, who was from New Zealand, died last week, the company said.
\n\u201cTroy was instrumental in establishing Young Pioneer Tours as one of the leading travel companies for North Korea,\u201d the firm said in a statement.
\n\u201cWe here at YPT have lost a visionary and a true pioneer to the travelling industry.
\n\u201cThose of us who have been fortunate enough to know or to be led on a tour by Troy have lost a dear friend.\u201d
\nCollings co-founded the company with Gareth Johnson in 2008.
\nIn an interview in 2018, he said his interest in the country was spurred by the 2004 documentary on North Korean gymnastics, A State of Mind.
\nDuring a subsequent trip, he realised \u201cthe potential tourism had to help the locals and to influence the country\u2019s development\u201d.
\n\u201cMore importantly, I made some real human connections with people I met that had a profound effect on me,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cI decided during that trip that this is what I wanted to dedicate my life to.
\nTogether with Mr Johnson – to whom he credited the idea – he began building a travel business to take groups to North Korea, at around half the cost of what other tour organisers were asking.
\n\u201cThe hurdles were less than most people would expect, but that was mostly due to good relations, with good partners we had formed in Pyongyang over our visits,\u201d he said.
\nThe agency\u2019s packages range from visiting the capital, to the Pyongyang Marathon, to tours through the countryside.
\n\u201cIf it were not for the budget pricing model which YPT pioneered then many young people would never have had the chance to visit the DPRK,\u201d Chad O\u2019Carroll, managing director of North Korea specialist website NK News told
\n\u201cThese are tours which in some cases – such as my own – played a major role in catalyzing a long-term interest in focusing on the country.\u201d
\nAll trips to North Korea receive close scrutiny from the North – groups are accompanied by a North Korean guide and it\u2019s not possible to choose your own itinerary.
\nThe company was thrust into the spotlight in 2016 after one of its customers, Otto Warmbier, was arrested in Pyongyang for allegedly trying to steal a propaganda sign and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was returned to the US in a coma in Juneand died a week later.
\nToday, the company also offers other tours off the beaten track, including Chernobyl in Belarus or East Timor in Asia.
\nIn 2018, Mr Collings said he\u2019d \u201clearnt a lot – but the biggest lessons have probably been to examine my own biases and view everything with a critical eye\u201d.
\n\u201cPeople talk all the time about North Korean propaganda, but it\u2019s naive to think we aren\u2019t inundated with our own. Things aren\u2019t black and white and agendas are everywhere.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t just form opinions based off the last book or article you read or speaker you saw but reserve judgement until you really have an understanding of a situation.\u201d
\nWhile tourism to North Korea remains niche, it has brought a steady flow of revenue to the country.
\nNumbers are hard to get and not reliable, but it\u2019s thought that around 100,000 foreigners visit the country each year.
\nThe vast majority are Chinese – the number of non-Chinese tourists is estimated to be between 8,000 and 10,000 per year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Troy Collings Online Pyongyang The head of the first budget travel agency to North Korea, Troy Collings, has died of a heart attack at 33. He was the co-founder and managing director of Young Pioneer Tours – an agency which focused on younger tourists who wanted to travel to the secretive communist country. Driven by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-111028","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n