Beijing,<\/p>\n
Chinese tourists have been involved in a major bus accident in North Korea that caused a large number of casualties, China’s state media and the government<\/p>\n
said on Monday, without giving a precise break-up.<\/p>\n
Chinese visitors account for about 80 percent of all foreign tourists to North Korea, says a South Korean think-tank, the Korea Maritime Institute, which estimates<\/p>\n
that tourism generates about $44 million each year in revenue for the isolated country.<\/p>\n
Chinese diplomats have rushed to the scene of Sunday’s accident in North Hwanghae province, the foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n
In a Twitter message earlier on Monday, Chinese state television’s English-language channel said a tour bus had fallen off a bridge, killing more than 30 people,<\/p>\n
but later deleted the message.<\/p>\n
State television’s main Chinese-language news channel later showed images of a crashed blue bus with its wheels in the air, in footage taken in pouring rain in<\/p>\n
the dark.<\/p>\n
It showed at least one person being treated in hospital, but also gave no details of casualties.<\/p>\n
The North Hwanghae province that borders South Korea is home to Kaesong, an ancient Korean capital thronged by tourists.<\/p>\n
North Korea is a popular, if offbeat, tourist destination for Chinese, especially those from the country’s northeast.<\/p>\n
China said more than 237,000 Chinese visited in 2012, but stopped publishing the figures in 2013.<\/p>\n
China is North Korea’s most important economic and diplomatic backer, despite Beijing’s anger at Pyongyang’s repeated nuclear and missile tests and support<\/p>\n
for strong United Nations sanctions against North Korea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beijing, Chinese tourists have been involved in a major bus accident in North Korea that caused a large number of casualties, China’s state media and the government said on Monday, without giving a precise break-up. Chinese visitors account for about 80 percent of all foreign tourists to North Korea, says a South Korean think-tank, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28945,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28943\/revisions\/28945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}