The city of Ji'an in Jilin province, one of the three cities on the border with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will reopen its cross-border tourist packages next month, according to an announcement of the local tourism bureau published on March 23.

Chinese tourist groups can now visit several DPRK places of interest, such as Pyongyang, Kaesong, Panmunjom and Myohyangsan (Mysterious Fragrant Mountain).

The service was suspended in October 2014, when the DPRK closed its border because of fears of the Ebola threat, and said that it would not reopen until the threat subsided.

This was the second time for China's cross-border group tours which started in the early 1990s to be suspended.

The group tours were stopped in 2001 when part of the railway line in DPRK was destroyed by flood waters, then resumed by the end of 2013.