Travelers are taking trips to North Korean hotels in defiance of a travel ban imposed on the country.
The U.S. government announced a travel-ban order Friday that bans all North Korean nationals from entering the United States.
The travel ban affects about 6 million people from North Korea.
The U.N. has warned that the ban will make the lives of people who don’t qualify for refugee status in the U.K. and elsewhere in the world worse.
North Korea has denied any wrongdoing, saying it’s simply responding to a global “nuclear threat.”
But a new documentary by the BBC’s The North Korean Experience shows that North Korean citizens have been using North Korean-made hotel rooms, which were used to house refugees fleeing the war-torn country.
“They’re really, really good,” says a woman who answers the phone at the hotel in the capital Pyongyang.
“It’s like a mini-country.
They’ve made them, like, so they’re more comfortable.”
The BBC reports that the hotel has an average of two beds, and most rooms have no running water, so the woman says that the rooms are full.
She says the North Koreans are a very polite bunch.
The BBC’s Kim Eun-chul reported that the North Korean government denies the North Korea Travel Ban is about protecting North Koreans from the threat of war.
“It is not about preventing people from travelling.
We are not restricting any travel,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement, Reuters reported.
The North Korean state news agency KCNA says the new movie is a work of propaganda aimed at the North’s leadership.
“The film shows the plight of the North and other oppressed nations, and its propaganda about the DPRK,” it said in an English-language statement.
“Its aim is to incite and create discord in the minds of people of the DPRK.”