From 2012 up until the COVID-19 outbreak and the country’s border closure in January 2020, North Korea pursued development of a tourism industry on levels unlike before despite perceived ‘threats’ — ideological and political — that international tourism opening purportedly poses to a socialist system. For autarkic, atomized, isolationist, hyper-security conscious and heavily sanctioned post-totalitarian North Korea, tourism development surprisingly functions to maintain rather than subvert the Kim-family system. More than merely a coping mechanism, I hypothesize tourism development’s multifaceted use under the Kim Jong Un regime. Externally, it served the regime as an instrument to indirectly engage the United States and pursue selective cooperation with North Korea’s powerful neighbor, China, not only to generate foreign exchange amid robust international sanctions but also to reconnect (on Pyongyang’s own terms) and revivify relations with its key patron in times of growing economic and geopolitical uncertainty; internally, it acted as a legitimacy-enhancing mechanism for the young hereditary successor (by way of particularistic narratives and performance rationales), as tourism development is linked to legacy politics and the long-term leadership desire to build a North Korean-style modern and cultured socialist civilization.