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NKOREA-MACAU-AVIATION-TRAVEL
North Korea’s Air Koryo to begin direct flights to Macau
HONG KONG, July 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – North Korea’s national airline Air
Koryo will resume direct flights from Pyongyang to the gambling enclave of
Macau next week after a 15-year hiatus, the Chinese territory’s civil
aviation authority said.
With the relaunch of the route, Macau will become the fourth city with a
regular scheduled flight to the North Korean capital after Beijing and
Shenyang in China and Vladivostok in Russia.
Macau’s civil aviation authority said in a statement that it had “approved
Air Koryo to operate flights between Pyongyang and Macau” twice a week,
starting from August 2.
Air Koryo previously operated a flight between the two cities between 1996
and 2004, the statement added.
Macau, often dubbed the “Las Vegas of Asia” for its massive gambling
industry, has a history with North Korea.
Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was
living in exile in Macau with his wife and children before he was poisoned in
a brazen assassination in Kuala Lumpur airport in 2017.
Macau’s gambling mogul Stanley Ho opened Casino Pyongyang in North Korea
in 1999.
China is by far the biggest source of tourists for the isolated North,
with direct flights and a long land border connecting the neighbours, and
tens of thousands believed to visit every year.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1120 hrs