A Chinese travel agency is to run the Juche Study Tour from Feb. 28 to March 13, Radio Free Asia reported on Wednesday.

The Young Pioneer Tours travel agency is offering three different tour options: a six- night, seven-day Juche Study Tour; a six-night, seven-day Korean Language Tour, both priced at 1,295 euros ($1,773); or a 13-night, 14-day Juche and Korean Language Tour (2,310 euros).

Young Pioneer Tours representative Gareth Johnson told RFA that North Korea had initiated the idea of the Juche Study Tour.

A North Korean government-appointed expert on Juche will lecture on the Juche philosophy and its history. He added that two students, one from New Zealand and one from Switzerland, have already signed up for the tour.

The week-long travel package offers four lectures on Juche and a Korean language introductory course along with visits to tourist attractions. It says visiting Pyongyang’s No.1 nightclub, called “Diplo”, is also included in the schedule. A two-week-long schedule includes even more lectures on Juche and Korean language.

Tad Ferrell, who runs the North Korean online news outlet nknews.org, commented that many people would see the package as a rare opportunity to see the normally inaccessible nation rather than a chance to study the Juche ideology seriously.

Greg Scarlatoiu of the Korea Economic Institute in the United States explained Juche is a combination of communism and extreme nationalism which aims to isolate its people and maintain the regime. He said the Juche Study Tours were a commercially motivated enterprise aiming to earn money by stimulating foreign curiosity in the world’s most isolated country.

“The Juche idea is not worth studying academically and ideologically by traveling such a long distance. Any visitor to North Korea will recognize what the Juche idea means by looking at its harsh reality,” Kim Kwang-jin, a high-ranking defector from the North Korean regime who is now a visiting fellow at the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said in the interview with RFA.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)