A few hundred foreigners lined up in Kim Il Sung stadium on Sunday for the Pyongyang marathon, less than half of last year’s contingent with Western tourism to North Korea battered by nuclear tensions and a US travel ban. A total of 429 foreign amateurs entered the Pyongyang Marathon this year, compared with more than 1,000 in 2017. But Cockerell told AFP that on the “battlefield of soft power” Washington had inflicted “a stunning defeat on itself” with the travel ban. Describing Pyongyang as “like the set of a Wes Anderson film” after his half marathon, he dismissed the Foreign Offices advice against “all but essential travel” to the North. “If someone tells you not to go somewhere, not to do something, that makes you more want to go there, surely,” he said.

Source: Hindustan Times April 08, 2018 11:37 UTC