North Korea's 'foreign friends' invited on £2,135 trip through the hermit kingdom

Foreign friends of North Korea's regime have arrived in the hermit kingdom for an eight-day trip to celebrate the country, reports have said.

Those wanting to celebrate in the Kim dynasty had the chance to pay €2350 (£2,135) for the visit "on the special occasion of the Liberation from the Japanese Empire", the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) wrote.

Newsweek reported North Korea's state media as saying that heads of local KFA chapters arrived in the closed country on Friday (11 August).

According to the KFA's advertised itinerary, participants would stay in a three-star hotel while visiting cultural monuments around the country and even taking part in "joint labour", described as "weeding with farmers" in parentheses.

The trip was not available to all though, according to the posting. People with passports from South Korea or Japan and any media-related people were not allowed to take part.

Not only is the event nominally around the Korean peninsula's liberation from the Japanese empire, something similarly celebrated in South Korea, but the trip will involved the unveiling of the first statue to the country's newest dictator from the Kim dynasty, Kim Jong-Un.

Though some are wary that the celebration could also belie plans for a new missile test launch as tensions in the peninsula continue to grow. Recent tests have taken place around special dates including US Independence Day on 4 July.

Any new test could increase the risk of military actions as rhetoric from US President Donald Trump ramps up and North Korea's responses similarly strike back. The isolated country had threatened an attack near the island of Guam, a US territory home to military bases in the Pacific.

After reports that North Korea might have developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile, Trump vowed a huge response to any threat to America. "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen," he said from his golf course in New Jersey.