North Korea is desperately poor after decades of isolation and bungled economic policies. Huge numbers of its estimated 24 million people suffer inadequate nutrition, aid agencies say.

That is a side of the country tourists do not see, but the door is slowly opening.

With the help of 40 local multilingual tour guides, Koryo’s offerings have expanded to include the “tranquil beaches” of North Korea’s coasts, and even home stays in the town of Haeju and the industrial city of Chongjin.

Tours also go to the South Korean-funded joint industrial estate in Gaeseong, the port city of Nampo, and Mount Baekdu ― a sacred site for North Koreans near the birthplace of leader Kim Jong-il previously closed to Amricans.

In September, Bonner will achieve a first ― taking foreign tourists on a bicycle trek near Mount Baekdu.

“That had never been done before ― it’s a challenge,” Bonner said.

In Pyongyang, women are not allowed to cycle as it is viewed as “inelegant... and dangerous,” Bonner said.

Also on the tourist trail is the country’s second-largest city Hamheung, open to foreigners only since last year, and Rason, a rarely-seen “free trade” area.

One trip is centered around March 21, the day personal income tax was abolished in the Stalinist country, while another offers the chance to “relax in a former sanatorium on the east coast.”

But the real prize is a visit to the Arirang Mass Games ― the world’s largest choreographed display of synchronized acrobatics, dance and flip-card displays, involving up to 100,000 people.

“The most spectacular event on Earth ... a performance ... which is only possible in North Korea,” a Koryo brochure says of the next festival in August.

Trips to North Korea are not cheap. A four-night stay can run about $1,400 a person.

The cost helps Bonner to fund another venture ― making documentary films in the country, which in the past have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States.

Tony Yoo, an Australian, said he was struck by “the severe isolation of the country and the deprivation of liberty, even for foreign visitors.”

Some wonder if the tourist dollars support a regime universally condemned for rights abuses, but Greek traveler Peter Psiachos said it could help coax North Korea out of its isolation.

“It would make people there less fearful of outsiders and further educate us that North Korea is not the enemy,” Psiachos, a lawyer who lives in New York, said.

Australian teacher Lachlan Olive visited North Korea in October, expecting “drab, heavily polluted” scenes, but was surprised by the number of parks and greenery in Pyongyang, and the quality of its infrastructure.

But he wondered whether, on a visit to a modern collective farm supposedly visited repeatedly by North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, he was seeing the real North Korea.

“We also visited an orphanage that had a similar feeling of being ‘sexed up’ for our benefit,” he said.